Under the Influence

It’s time for Monday’s Music Moves Me, or more commonly referred to as #4M.

Our musical conductor for this month is Cathy from Curious as a Cathy. First, I’d like to apologize to Cathy for missing the first half of this month. I do hope to be a better participant in the future. Second, it’s Free Choice week, and I’ve got a special ‘Under the Influence’ post for you today. 

A little backstory for today’s post:

As you may or may not know, I’ve not been well recently. (Don’t worry, I’m supposedly on the mend!)  Typically, on a good day, it takes 45 minutes via the non-emergency medical transportation company to get to my appointments. But, it’s winter here in Idaho, and we had some nasty storms come through. Usually, I get to ride all by myself (just me and the driver). But, due to the road conditions and the storm, on this particular day I got to share the ride home with a FULL van. I was the only one that was going home from a medical appointment. All of the others we picked up from adult daycare centers. Yes, each of my fellow passengers have a disability of some sort - whether it be mental, social, or physical. They ranged in ages 19 to 56.  It’s a beautiful thing that these individuals get to have a place they can go on a daily basis to learn the necessary skills to get by in life. 

The scenario was this: Snow is falling, the roads are icy. Yes, the main roads are clear, but honestly - NO ONE lives on the main road. I live in a rural area in the heart of potato farm country.  The transportation driver was all of 25 years old. One of the passengers was a lady in her mid 30s. This particular lady had to be home by a specific time each day, or she just could not mentally handle it.  

We started our trek out of city limits to take our first passenger home. We had to go up a fairly steep hill to get to the driveway. The driver managed to get the van stopped in a place we wouldn’t slide, and let the first passenger off at the end of her driveway. Then we got stuck. With quick thinking, the driver put the van in reverse, and we backed down the hill until she could safely turn around. She wasn’t happy because this meant we would have to take the long way around to the next passengers home. We managed to get him home safely, and his dogs were happy to bark at us and chase us out of the driveway.  The next passenger lived on the other side of the next town, next to the river.  And that meant the roads were very slippery. We took our time and we made it safely. 

I noticed the youngest had taken a mental note that the lady that needed to get home ‘in time’ was getting anxious. So he started singing along to the radio. I was truly impressed that he knew the words to just about every song that was played. And it was a grateful distraction that occupied the lady’s mind so that she wouldn’t notice we were definitely running late. 

We started talking about music and learned everyone’s favorite artist. We managed to get everyone home safely without any incident, with the exception of getting stuck the one time. What normally would take 45 minutes took 2 ½ hours. I cried when I got inside my door, because of this young boy that helped alleviate anxiety and stress for not just the one lady, but for every one else riding with us. It was truly special.

My song choice for today is one of the songs that he sang and knew every single word.  

The artist says this about the song "We wrote 'BANG!' about the weird middle-ground between being a kid and becoming an adult; a time when we're doing all the things adults are supposed to do, but we don't yet feel grown up. The fact is, adulthood is bound to hit us at some point, so the plan we made in the song is to 'go out with a bang'. “