“The Birth of Suburban Man”
by Rick Kaempfer
I remember the exact moment I came to grips with my title of Suburban Man. It took me nearly ten years of gradual self-awareness to get to that moment, but it is seared in my brain. I was at a red light at the intersection of Rand Road and Elmhurst Road in Mt. Prospect, sitting in the driver’s seat of my minivan, waiting for the longest red light in the Western Hemisphere to turn green. “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC, a great rock and roll song from my high school years, came on the radio. And I cranked it.
When that pounding bass and powerful guitar filled the van, I realized for the first time what a great stereo the minivan had. This was a rare outing without one of my three boys in the car with me, and I hadn’t properly broken in the stereo since we purchased the minivan two years earlier. I started singing along with the lyrics, screaming them with the same reckless rock and roll abandon of lead singer Brian Johnson. I bobbed my head to the beat. I had almost forgotten the power of rock and roll. Yeah! If I had a lighter in my pocket, I would have lit it and held it in the air. Rock and Roll! I may have been lost for the last ten or fifteen years, but I was back. This was the real me. This song was speaking to me.
“Knocking me out with those American thighs,” I screamed.
That’s when it happened.
In mid head-bob, I suddenly saw something with my peripheral vision. It was the driver of the car in the lane next to me; a 16-18 year old girl driving a Honda Civic. And she was staring at me. “Kimberly” or “Jennifer” told me more with one facial expression than I had ever been told in a decade of suburban life. I’m not normally a lip reader but I read her lips on that Thursday evening as she uttered one simple word to herself while watching me rock out to AC/DC in my minivan.
“Ew,” she said.
It was an out-of-body experience. I was suddenly sixteen years old again, and sitting in the Civic with Kimberly/Jennifer looking at the 40-something year-old man in the minivan. I could see myself behind the steering wheel, and it might as well have been my father driving his 1976 Cutlass Supreme station wagon. Of all the preposterous sights; my 40-something-year-old father was cranking AC/DC. I had the exact same reaction as Kimberly/Jennifer.
“Ew,” I said.
Reality overwhelmed me at that moment and made me look in the mirror for the first time since I moved to the suburbs in 1996. I’m 42. I drive a mini-van. I have three children, all of whom think my name is spelled “Daaaaaaaaaad” because I’m constantly embarrassing them. I haven’t actually been knocked out by American thighs since the Reagan Presidency. I have a 2 ½ car garage because I need room to store my bevy of lawn care implements. I won’t go into the city during the weekend because the traffic is unbearable.
I was painting an unmistakable picture of myself. I had become Suburban Man.
I came to my senses at the Rand/Elmhurst red light that evening. Somebody needed to turn down that infernal racket in the minivan, and quickly, before some Justin/Zachary pulled into the turn lane and saw the same ridiculous sight as Kimberly/Jennifer. I reached over and slowly returned the volume to its rightful level.
And I have never, and will never, crank the stereo in the minivan again.
The next time Kimberly/Jennifer sees me at a red light, she won’t be alarmed by the delusional man behind the wheel. Everything will look as it should. I may be enjoying a Peter, Paul & Mary song on the soft rock station, but the volume will not reflect the power of the lyrical message. Sure, she might see me singing “If I had hammer, I’d hammer in the morning.”
But it will only be because I’m on the way to the hardware store.
And there better be a parking spot close to the door…
