Music to My Ears

The music playing in Astoria's Key Food grocery store is always danceable. If it isn't, then it is usually Michael Bolton. "How Can We Be Lovers If We Can't Be Friends?" is one of my favorite tunes to sing along to while picking out my favorite brand of rice pilaf (Casbah's All-Natural) or picking up some of my favorite orange juice (Tropicana -No Pulp- with Calcium and Vitamin D).

Anyway, Gabe and I l-o-v-e dancing to the music in Key Food. It brings back memories of riding in Rob's old McCarl's truck when I was a kid, usually when he was hauling me off to middle school volleyball practice or to a friend's house. I mean, the sound of the Bee Gee's or any other selection that would play on Steubenville's "Light FM" 97.3 automatically brings back that truck, even the smell of the old leather or the dust on the dashboard from one of the old mill's he'd had to drive through for work. I can even hear the engine and remember which bumps in which road would really make the truck shake and the sound of the old shocks when they'd barely absorb the road's blemishes.

Once, an old lady caught us dancing in the cereal aisle. I laughed, expecting her to smile back. But she didn't. And Gabe kept on dancing. I liked that about Gabe -- I had stopped but he didn't. He didn't care. He was having harmless fun. (She didn't know what that was, as was made obvious.) 

Now, when we go to Key Food, Gabe opts to not sit in the buggy -- which in NY and I think everywhere else in the world except the Ohio Valley is known as a 'cart.' Our deal is that he can walk next to the cart and bust out his dance moves as long as he doesn't get in the way of the other carts. I am still trying to figure out if I want it to be a cart or a buggy in his vocabulary... Do I teach him 'buggy' where he ultimately will be teased as I was once I left my hometown but yet he will have a little of the Ohio I grew up with in him, or do I teach him 'cart' which sounds really snobby and just way too correct? Currently I am teaching him the two, and letting him decide which one he likes better. Or just confusing him.