Driving Home After College

I spent four years going to school at UCLA, where I had ambiguous feelings about being living in a big city with a high population density.

After I had gone through the last of my graduations, my parents left. And I, in my apartment alone, unceremoniously packed up the tidbits I had collected over the four years into a some beige cardboard boxes.

Going up the 405, a song by Bob Seger came on the radio:

And those hollywood nights

In those hollywood hills

She was looking so right

In her diamonds and frills

All those big city nights

In those high rolling hills…

And it went on… an appropriate coda for driving alone out of those hills for probably the last time. That wasn’t all though – right as I crested those hills and started going downhill for Moorpark, another song came on, this one by John Mellencamp:

Well I was born in a small town

And I live in a small town

Probably die in a small town

Oh, those small communities

No I cannot forget where it is that I come from

I cannot forget the people who love me

Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town

And people let me be just what I want to be

Probably I was just emotional and ascribed excess meaning to a random occurrence, but I then happily drove all the way home to where I could be myself.