Honking And Yelling

There are two ways Americans love to express joy.  Perhaps above all other options.  And those two things are honking car horns and yelling.  The heroine of joyful articulations.  Last night, after the San Francisco Giants won the World Series, the streets of Midtown Sacramento came alive with a cacophonous mixture of piercing car horns and blissful, unhindered outcries.  A mixture that wasn't at all unpleasant.  In fact, it put a smile on my face.  Sent my heart racing like on Halloween night when kilos of sugar surged through my veins robbing me of sleep.  The way the horns sliced the air like knives and drunken men of all ages sent expletives flying into the night sky like confetti had a thrilling, almost punk rock quality to it.  We're not just celebrating... we're making some f'in noise!

It's not just the sports crowd that get into this.  We dress up bridal vehicles just for the sake of making complete strangers honk and holler in celebration of matrimony.  Sometimes I'm even tempted to do it when a funeral procession passes just as a way to cheer everyone up.  Can you just picture a row of car following a hearse with everyone honking horns and whooping it up out the windows?  Would be one hell of a send out.  (That may actually have to go into my will.)  We stand at street corners holding up signs that sum up our political beliefs in catchy slogans in hope that others will agree and unleash a litany of honking.  We do it as parades pass.  Or when we arrive at a friends house to pick them up for a night of debauchery, "HONK! HONK! HONK!  Get your butt down here!  And bring the flask!  HONK! HONK!  Woohoo!"   

My first introduction to this celebratory audial expression of delight was in 5th grade when the 6th grade teacher led his class and our own out onto the sidewalk to demonstrate against the war in Iraq.  The first one, that is.  Bush Senior.  We held up handmade signs in our little Catholic school uniforms and screamed at oncoming traffic "Honk for peace in the Middle East!" like pint-sized UN cheerleaders.  With each pounding of a horn or holler out a car window, my excitement grew and grew.  To a near feverish state.  I'll never forget this one guy in a white convertible with a matching white suit and tight Jheri curls literally driving around the block in circles to up the ante on his fantastic rave of honks.  At one point (while stopped at a light) he jumped up onto his seat and started honking with his foot.  I kid you not; I couldn't make this stuff up.  I had no idea what the war was about, but if raging against it caused a grown man to stomp on the steering wheel of his Chrysler Sebring, then I was a peace crusader.

It was this man I thought about last night as the honking and yelling lingered well past midnight.  That if I had planned better I would be an hour and a half away in San Francisco with my head out the moon roof of my Rav4 tapping out "We Are the Champions" on my steering wheel with my boot heel.  Well... there's always next year.