“PICK A LANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
There were little differences, though. The right lane bordered some woods, which were pretty. The left lane was closer to the divider, which made a calming whoosh sound as you drove past it.
The thing was, I liked both of these things equally, too.
“PICK A LANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
I didn’t know which one to pick!
Discussion question:
Which lane should the driver pick?
“Everyone Was Singing the Same Song”: The Duke of Earl Recalls His Trip to America in June of 1962
The Duke of Earl, raised in privilege and ensconced in luxury, but recently agitated by the achingly beautiful tones of Technicolor in the movies of the palace theater and by a glamorously faded silhouette of the Marlboro Man on the back of a once-glossy magazine that had somehow made its way to the coffee table of the family lake house, decided that it was finally time to see America.
He requested funds for an official state visit, and his request was immediately granted. But he was nervous as he flew in his well-appointed private airplane to the vast and open and young and casual and confident nation. He already knew he liked America, but he didn’t know if it would like him.
He went first to the capital, Washington, which was the perfect place to start, as its proud and polished formality spoke a language reassuringly familiar to the duke in him. Then to smart and unruly New York City, and its lovely suburbs in deep and shallow Connecticut; then to Chicago, the tall city in the middle of the wide country; and from there he was taken to a representative handful of farms, big and small, in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. He visited a rodeo in the state of Texas, which to his extreme delight was almost exactly as he imagined it; he saw the Grand Canyon of Arizona; and he traveled by train among the optimistic and neatly dressed middle classes to San Francisco, a city so light in every way that he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. This must be what gave them the idea for Technicolor, he thought, looking out at it; it even made him chuckle out loud now and then, girlishly and by himself, at how pretty it was, yes, but more than anything else how light, its hills and its colors and bridges and water and attitudes and people and skies. It made him feel he might somehow float up out of his heavy black shoes into one of the many clouds sitting atop the sunny city, but not just any cloud, a cloud from a children’s drawing, puffed and friendly, right next to a sun wearing a movie star’s plastic sunglasses and smiling.
And everywhere he went—everywhere—when he introduced himself as the Duke of Earl, the people he met would burst into a wide, friendly grin. He had been nervous, and for fair reason: Americans had no royalty, of course, but beyond that, as every student learned in school, the nation had in fact been born out of a rebellion against royalty! And, while anyone in the world might be naturally expected to be at least a little starstruck by, say, the queen of England or the princess of Monaco … who, to be honest, had ever heard of the Duke of Earl?
But the Americans, it seemed, to his deep and enduring relief, could not have been more delighted. “Are you really the Duke of Earl, now?” they would ask with that bright, true American smile. One could see the charm lighting up their eyes from some source deep inside them. “Well, isn’t that something! The Duke of Earl! I can’t wait to tell people I met the real-life Duke of Earl.”
And then came the most incredible part: always—inevitably, invariably—within a few moments of being introduced to them as the Duke of Earl, he would catch the Americans humming or gently singing a happy little tune to themselves. But the even more magical part was this: no matter where he was in all of America—the wide streets of Texas, the lawns of Ohio, the pubs of Boston or Philadelphia—everyone was always singing the same song.
It was an upbeat song: lovely, happy, sincere, full of joy and life. It was an unmistakably American song. It seemed to be mostly gibberish sounds and melodic repetitions, but there were a few phrases he could make out when people got carried away. “Yes, I …” “Oh I’m gonna love you …” “Oh oh …” “Nothing can stop me now …” “ ’Cause I’m …”
“What’s that song?” he would ask, and the Americans would always immediately snap out of it. “Oh, I didn’t realize …” they would say, very often blushing. They had never even noticed they had been singing. “Just this silly song, I guess.”