Life In The Fast Lane

In the summer of 1978, I was returning home from my weekly music lesson. My brass sousaphone was neatly stacked in the rear of my copper-colored Chevrolet Vega hatchback. It was Saturday morning and the rest of my weekend stretched out in front of me. The plodding low brass tunes that I had been playing just a few minutes earlier were being replaced by those pouring out of my cassette player.
As I rode to the crest of one of the few streets in Boulder with four lanes, I heard the unmistakable drum, bass and harmony intro to Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion." It shouldn't have come as any surprise, since I had made the tape for the specific purpose of playing it in my car. Loud. As I came over the hill, I saw in the light ahead of me turn to green, and even though the street narrowed to just two lanes, I dropped the pedal to the metal and accelerated into the intersection. I was sixteen and the world was full of rock and roll possibilities.
That would include the police car that I failed to notice sitting in the Seven-Eleven parking lot. As I roared past, I was made instantly aware of its presence: lights, sirens and all. I was pulled over one block past the light. I turned off the car, ejected the tape, and began fishing in my glove compartment for my registration. I was sixteen and getting my first speeding ticket.
It wasn't the only ticket I got when I was sixteen, but it was the first. And I have always blamed Aerosmith. When I heard that Steven Tyler had fallen from the stage at a show in South Dakota Wednesday night, the first thing that I thought was, "Wow, how old is that guy?" He's sixty-one. I'm forty-seven. Since that summer afternoon, I have been cited for a number of different moving violations. Most of them came in those early years of proto-driving, resulting in the suspension of my license at the beginning of my senior year in high school. Steven has been in and out of rehab, raised a beautiful elfin daughter, and managed to keep his band and his career alive through thirty-plus summers. There was no word of any summons issued for Mister Tyler's stage mishap.