Elvis and I were sitting in a 1982 diesel Chevette parked in traffic on the way to Rivergate Mall. It’s not all together clear to me why we chose to go to Rivergate Mall except that we were not particularly interested in Christmas shopping and the adventure of going to an unknown location seemed to make the task more exciting. Also, that was around the time that Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” had come out. The rumor was that the song was based on an encounter with girls from Goodpasture Christian School. Goodpasture was (and I suppose still is) located in the general area of Rivergate Mall. We wanted to get lucky.
Instead we got stuck, and we should have known that two dudes in a diesel Chevette don’t stand a chance at Rivergate Mall anyway. Elvis had this way of driving when he was pissed that was similar to the way Grandma Bec would drive — slam on the gas, slam on the brakes. He’d also get kind of judgmental about the cigarettes I smoked which was funny because he smoked too. Long story short, the atmosphere could get tense. I don’t know if we were getting tense with each other at that particular point, but we were clearly not having a good time or making any progress with the Goodpasture girls.
So on the radio comes a stupid parody Christmas song about the Twelve Pains of Christmas which you may have heard. I fancy myself above parody songs (although I dig me some Weird Al) and at first this song was more annoyance heaped on frustration. Elvis may have turned it up a bit for that very reason. Then we seemed to cross a threshold. Our rage and disappointment was being expressed, right there on the radio, by “rigging up the lights” guy. His plaintive cries of “why the hell are they blinking?” had us in tears. Like joy on that first Christmas morning, hilarity washed over us and all the suckage of the trip was transformed into a living work of parody. This is one of my most treasured holiday memories.