Baby, Baby

Part of being a soccer mom is driving teenagers to tournaments in other states. I tow the line. I drive the kids, roll down my windows when the after game fragrance is overpowering.

I generally get the African kids from the team in my car...and the occasional non-African thrown into the mix.  We listen to a lot of reggaeton, rap, hip hop. (The only objection I have is to Lil Wayne. I'm too old to understand the point to the lyrics that come through those teeth.) Even though we are listening to the kids' music on the car stereo, each kid has on their own headphones. One of the kids, who we'll refer to as Abou, keeps his headphones on and sings loud, badly and with pride, every time we drive. I admire him greatly.

Yusef ALWAYS sits in the front. It's his territory. He sends text messages, checks soccer scores, manages the music (even though he's listening to his own music with his headphones on), and occasionally gives me a grunt when I try to make conversation.

They're all extremely polite to me if I talk to them, but conversation with the mom is not really desirable. This can get a little lonely.

For this trip, I prepared for the boredom by downloading every exciting audio-book I could find on iTunes.  This concerned the kid I call my 'white son', we'll call him Michael. Michael was very worried about whether or not I felt I could listen to a book and drive at the same time.  As wild as Michael is reputed to be on his own time, what I see, is that he is constantly expressing concerns about safety.

On the way back from the soccer tournament, about an hour outside Manhattan, I started to get very, very sleepy.  We pulled over for two diet cokes and whatever the kids needed and slipped back on the highway.  Yusef kept plying me with diet coke, and we blasted Biggie ("Big Poppa", "Hypnotize") but I couldn't seem to battle the drowsiness.

I turned down the music and told the kids that I needed their help. That the diet coke wasn't cutting it. They needed to do something very entertaining. Abou needed to sing louder, Michael had to tell jokes, something.

I got the teenage blank stare. Yusef pointedly pushed the diet coke closer to me and said nothing. I sighed, remembered that they were teenagers, and turned the music back up. In the rear view mirror, I saw them put their heads together, mutter and look at me. (I don't take the behind the back talking personally. It's 90% of what makes a teenager a teenager around their parents.)

A minute later I noticed a change in music. Something that sounded much more vanilla than what we usually listen to. Next, I noticed that not only was Abou singing loud, they were all singing. Even the kids in my third row of seats were singing--loud and with pointed smiles into my rear view mirror. (Except Yusef, he slipped on the 3-D glasses that Hanni insists on collecting so he can sell them in Yemen for $50 a pop, joke or not?)

Then...the chorus hit, and they really let it out..."Baby Baby Baby, Noooo, like Baby, Baby, Baby...Ohhhhh...like Baby Baby Baby".  Their usually tough and inscrutable faces covered with shining smiles like a teenage barbershop quintet.  My super cool teenagers were serenading me with Justin Bieber! This made me ridiculously happy and although I continued to practice extremely cautious driving, I laughed my patooty off at their cuteness.

The song ended and they kept their headphones off. Abou managed the playlist on the car stereo and started an in the seat, under the seat-belt, dance party, Yusef videotaped.  The dance party lasted into our first stop in the Bronx.

This soccer mom finished the drive wide awake, and filled with love.