"CaaaRR!!!"

I have many favorite scenes in the movie Wayne's World. I love Ed O'Neill's fourth-wall-breaking psychotic soliloquies. The Bohemian Rhapsody scene is a classic. Robert Patrick's cameo is awesome as is the scene with the blatant product placement. I could go on, but I'd risk reverting to my high school days and quoting the entire film. One scene in particular which resonated with me was the one where the guys are playing hockey in the street. Every few moments one of them shouts “CAR!” and moves the net to the side to let a vehicle pass.

I grew up on a block that didn't have much traffic. There were two roads in to the neighborhood from the main road, and my friends and I would play on one of the intersecting roads that was parallel to the main one. We'd play baseball, and use what was there as bases. A no-parking sign. A crack in the curb. A manhole cover. We'd play football, and approximate yards based on trees and telephone poles. We'd play basketball in my friend's driveway, and occasionally with his neighbor across the street who also had a net over his garage so we could play full court. With no regard for our safety we'd often ride our bikes down hills and out of driveways. Once I almost got hit coming down the road and swerved, crashing into a parked car and flying over the hood. Another time while playing tag on bikes with a frisbee, I was riding up on someone's lawn with my hands off the handlebars and hurled the frisbee at my friend's bike just as I ran out of curb. My front tire actually hit a tree root just shy of the curb and I flew over the handlebars into the street, skinning my hands just before the flipping bike landed on my back. Apart from college and the time I had with my (now ex-) girlfriend, those were some of the best years of my life.

I wouldn't say my life was completely sheltered, but I definitely didn't venture out enough to realize that “Caaaaarr!!!” was a common cry among children. I had only heard it on my block, any time a vehicle would interrupt any of our games, so when I saw Wayne's World it prompted an awed “We say that!” in my mind. It's a shared childhood experience, and a timeless one. Just last week at the Hoboken feast, a person was pulling out of their parking spot at one point, and needed to get through the procession. The band moved aside but the crowd up ahead had stopped and wasn't looking or budging. Someone shouted “CAAAAARRR!!!” and a few startled parishioners and older women moved aside to let him pass. It was such a reflex on my part, something deep within myself, that I realized only after shouting that it had been me.

For a time my block quieted down. I grew up, and my younger friends followed suit not long after. For a time there were no children, and then one of our neighbors got married and had a few kids. An older couple with no kids and several cats moved out of the house across the street, and a young pregnant couple moved in. In the blink of an eye they had three kids, and suddenly their kids and our next-door neighbor's kids are constantly outside, riding bikes out into the street and running about with various friends and cousins. The familiar and at times irritating songs of the ice cream man returned after a long hiatus, at times blaring from his speakers late at night when these kids are out longer than my friends and I ever were. Unlike my generation, these children have no fear of or respect for the automobile. They ride around the cars and sometimes glare at the drivers encroaching on their territory. The parents put out blockades sometimes and these yellow glow-in-the dark stand up kid silhouettes with an orange flag labeled “slow, children at play.” I've never come close to hitting the kids but with the sign out the center of the street and people parallel parking, I've come close to hitting or grazing that.

Is the shout of “CaaaRR!!!” lost to this generation? When I was younger, we all had to watch out for cars. Despite the youthful sense of immortality, our parents conveyed enough sense of danger that we were cautious. I made mistakes, got some scrapes, and learned from it. With the barrage of signs and barricades on our block, it is the drivers who now have to watch out for the kids. The kids know we're watching them, and in the comfort of that assumption lack any sense of real danger. The best situation would be one in which we were watching EACH OTHER but, failing that, I just need to back out of my driveway very, very slowly.

I definitely miss the lazy days of playing games in the street, real or made-up, and the cry of “CAR!” will always take me back to that particular zeitgeist.