"I'll Drive You Home"

Upon reflection, I’ve had a fortunate life in the area of work. As a freshly minted teenager, I would visit Evergreen Park Grocery and dream of someday working there like my father did, and at the age of 14, I got $2/hour to live out that dream, such as it was. From there, I yearned to try other occupations, from record stores to teaching, and I’d be chuffed to tell Young Erick that both of those things happened in due course. (Oh, and Young Erick, one of them got you to meet David Bowie, and one of them got you to own houses and cars, so I’ll let you ponder on which one was better.) I even got to DJ a bit here and there, and while it never hit the heights of a professional radio gig, it was certainly better than the summer I played preset cassettes on my boom box for a nerd camp dance while my unrequited crush stayed in her room.

What I never crossed off my professional life list was acting, either regular or voice, but while I still yearn for that big breakthrough -- seriously, ask me how many times I had variations of the same "SNL Dream" over the years -- I’m pretty sure that I’ll hit the end of the runway without seeing it come to fruition. Even though I acted in high school for two years of Drama, and I could thoughtfully explain to you why and how I made the purposeful acting choices I made for each role, I knew all the way back in 7th grade that having a career as an actor was likely not in the cards, and it can all be boiled down to four words:

“I’ll drive you home.” 

This kid had to say that.

If memory serves -- and it most likely doesn't, but regardless -- that's what my character had to say to Wendy Jennette in Mr. Anderson’s class during a Drama unit, and try as I might, the unattractive superskinny kid with huge glasses fixed in permanent Photogrey just couldn’t find the way to make the words work for the small cute nice girl in front of me. I knew the line was supposed to read as seductive and confident, but as I was neither of those things, I kept hitting the wrong emphasis points over and over again, at one point defaulting to more of a Huckleberry Hound patois, which is the farthest thing from erotic one can summon.

The heckling started once it was clear it wasn’t going to happen, with Amy Bailey shouting “HE CAN’T DO IT HE CAN’T DO IT!!!” in her high desperate shrillness, hoping in vain that flatly braying the stunningly obvious would grant her entry into the Cool Girls Court, a mountain she spent most of her young life trying and failing to summit. In the end, my humiliations stretched over vowels and consonants while time crawled on a naked belly, I was put back on the bench where I belonged, armed with the knowledge that there was no psychological path of attractiveness that I could ever vocally summon.

I still yearn for the chance to prove that I can say those four words and, like, mean it, man. But even if some miracle were to occur, isn't it nice to still have things to desire that have yet to materialize? Isn't that what home really is, after all?