Some mornings when I'm running late for work, I take a toll road instead of my usual route. It's a little faster, for $2 each way. This morning I left the house late, so I headed toward the toll road. I got on the entrance ramp and pulled up to the first toll plaza, waiting for my turn to fling my 50 cents into the little plastic basket. I had driven up to an exact-change lane, but it still wasn't moving very quickly, probably because there are so many commuters in the area, going both ways. It's interesting that it's called a toll "plaza," isn't it? It sounds like some sort of social gathering should take place at one.

As I waited, I wondered how often people throwing their change in the toll lanes actually missed the baskets. Maybe the ground around the toll plaza was an oasis of silver coinage—dropped change everywhere—and none of us ever noticed because we were always busy focusing on the baskets so we wouldn't be one of those people who missed. I usually use quarters, but this time I was scrounging for change so had to use a quarter, a nickel and two dimes. I had turned the radio down when I was looking for change (yes, I'm one of those people who turns the radio down when they're looking for street signs and addresses, and I know quieter music probably doesn't help). I turned the volume back up and Prince's "Raspberry Beret" was playing.

It was up to the plaza by now, so I lined my car up with the basket, lowered the window, and tossed the change…Damn it! My change didn't all make it in! I either didn't throw hard enough for all of my coins to make it into the basket, or they stuck to my hand—or something. For whatever reason, one or both of the dimes didn't make it. Maybe I should have known. Dimes are lighter. So I opened the door of my car and scrambled out, kneeling on the ground—there were coins all over! I picked up a few of them and dumped them in the basket, at the same time I became aware of someone screaming at me. I assumed it was someone behind me who was pissed off that I was a klutz, so I didn't turn around, but as I hopped back in the car I realized it had been the woman working the toll booth to the right of my lane (the one to the right of me had an attendant—no basket). After I drove off, I remembered seeing her mouth moving and hearing the screaming. I think she said, "Ma'am, hello…!?" or "Ma'am, just go!" but I couldn't really tell because there was also the noise of all the other cars stopping and going and throwing their change, and the loud bell that sounds when the machine has counted your change and it's OK to go through.

After I drove off I also realized that the lap belt part of my seat belt was outside the car. The shoulder harness was in place because it goes back and forth automatically, but you have to put the lap belt on yourself. In my haste, I had flipped it out the door when I took it off to get out and it hadn't recoiled all the way. When I got back in, the automatic shoulder harness moved back into place but the lap belt, at least the metal buckle part at the end, was either closed in between the frame and the door or flapping outside the door! I wondered if the cars driving around me right now were the same ones who saw my foible at the basket with the dimes. Could they see my lap belt flapping outside the car? Well, at least we were all in cars and not standing in line somewhere, in which case someone surely would have at least stared. But we were in cars. Although all of us driving near each other can physically see each other, we have the metal and glass of our cars separating us and we're all, for the most part, looking forward. I just won't make eye contact, I thought.

It's like what must be going through the minds of those people who pick their noses at stoplights. They can't think we don't see them; they must just think we'll mind our own business and not yell that they're disgusting cretins—just because we're enclosed in separate, mobile shells. Maybe the nosepickers simply know that they can ignore our pointing and yelling if they want. I don't think I've ever seen anyone picking their nose in the car with the window down. They do it with the window up, so they can at least pretend no one will notice.

By this time on the radio, Prince was done singing and the DJ was talking—I had sort of tuned him out, but now I heard him saying he had been in the front row of a Prince concert, and at one point in the middle of "Raspberry Beret," Prince had pointed the microphone at the DJ to finish one of the lines following "She wore a raspberry beret," and he sang, for everyone at the concert to hear, "And if she was blind, she wouldn't wear much more," and then, after hearing himself sing it to the thousands of people at the concert, he realized that what he sang couldn't really be the line. If she was blind she wouldn't wear much? But that's what he had been singing to himself for years. The line is "And if it was warm, she wouldn't wear much more." I wondered how he could have misheard that one, but then songs have a funny way of making us think we know what we're singing along to. Some of the words are pronounced so strangely in order to fit with the rest of the song.

I couldn't blame the DJ too much, unless he had been a DJ at the time and should have been somewhat familiar with Prince's lyrics, I guess. The section of our brains that holds song lyrics must be time-proof, because everyone can remember song lyrics from years ago. But that also makes it easy to retain the wrong lyrics forever. There are plenty of things I'd rather remember, but instead, I have no trouble singing almost every word to some Billy Ocean songs.

Like the DJ, there was music I would sing along to that I only later learned had completely different lyrics—the Go-Go's song "Our Lips are Sealed" sounded much more like "I wish to see you" to me then. A few years ago on TV, the song was on a commercial for one of those '80s music compilations. They played the song and flashed its title in yellow. I never knew that "Our lips are sealed" had been the name of the song. I was wrong—Belinda Carlisle had never been singing, "I wish to see you."

I did the same thing with one of my long-time favorites—"Every Breath You Take," by the Police. I've loved it since it was released in 1985 or whenever it was, but I misunderstood the lyrics. Although "Every move you make, every vow you break, every step you take," makes a lot more sense than "Every move you make, every vial you break…," I always pictured a whole bunch of little glass vials dropping to the floor and shattering. I never questioned the logic of "every vial you break" in the song.

My boyfriend is horrible at correctly identifying song lyrics. A couple of years ago there was a really overplayed song called "The Freshmen," I think, by one of those 20-something bands whose names all sound the same. Part of the very-often-repeated chorus says, "For the life of me, I cannot remember…" My boyfriend referred to the song once as the borderline song, and I asked him why, because they never say "borderline," at least not that I could hear. "You know that part when they say, 'Borderl-i-i-ine, I cannot remember…'" The singers do use some weird pronunciation to get the right effect, but this song is definitely my boyfriend's worst attempt at deciphering song lyrics. I heard him singing along to it another time. At one point, they sing, "I cannot believe we'd ever die for these sins," and my boyfriend sang, "I cannot believe we'd ever dropped 40 cents."

I thought of all this—dropping 40 cents, how the raspberry beret girl wouldn't wear much if she was blind, Sting's woman breaking vials—in the car with my lap belt buckle still outside the car somewhere, and I realized that I had dropped 10 cents (or maybe 20), so I started laughing uncontrollably. Were my fellow drivers watching me laugh? They couldn't hear me, I knew, but they could see if they were looking. Would they assume I was emotionally unbalanced or that I just heard something on the radio that was really funny? It's not my fault. Dimes are lighter. Maybe next time all of us commuters should rendezvous at the toll plaza and compare notes.

Brain Candy E-Zine has no rights to this story.  The rights belong to the author.

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