A/N: This is just drabble that I wrote for the writing group me and some friends started to keep ourselves from getting out of practice. For all who are curious, this was based on the prompt, “a person driving a car listening to the radio who hears a recording of their childhood voice.” No great work of literature, but I hope it’s amusing. Feedback please!

A Very Long Trip

“No, no, go to that jazz station—”

“Mom!” Irritably, I swatted my mother’s hand away. “Lay off the damn radio! Jesus!”

My mother crossed her arms and settled huffily back into the passenger sear. I rolled me eyes at her and turned my attention back to the road. Exciting, stimulating landscapes flashed past my window—Grass. Wheat. Cow. Silo. More cows.

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel to the steady beat of some hard-to-place classic rock song. I threw periodic glances at my mother, but she was staring determinedly out the passenger-side window.

I love my mother, but being stuck in a car with her for three hours is enough to drive anyone insane. When I was younger and we went on this sort of car trip, she would either be criticizing my dad’s driving, or doing the driving herself, and bitching about everyone else on the road, and in between, she’d be fussing with the radio and tuning it to stations no one else liked, or telling me how weird my friends were or asking why I didn’t have a boyfriend. When I got older, I’d foolishly expected things to change. Nothing did, except that now my mom forced me to drive instead of her, moaning about her eyesight or her arthritis or something.

“You know…” My mom abruptly turned to me, with that Jewish-mother glint in her eyes that could mean nothing good. “That boy from your office, the cute one…”

“Benjamin,” I filled in wearily, eyes fixed on the road, doing my best to tune my mother out. She’d tried to have this conversation before.

“I think he has a country house somewhere around your uncle’s,” she continued, oblivious to how little I wanted to be talking about this. “You should invite him over for dinner some time, the next time we visit Uncle Zed.

“You went around finding out where all my male friends live??”

“You two should get together, though,” she urged, ignoring my protests. “You’d be so cute together.”

I sighed. “I don’t like him like that,” I said tersely. “Besides, Ben’s gay.”

“Oh no he’s not.” My mother can brush away facts like cobwebs. “He may say that, but I’m sure he’s just a little confused. He’ll get over it. There’s no way a pretty girl like you—”

“Mom, he told me himself,” I told her for the second or third time, rolling my eyes.

“No honey, trust me. I have an eye for these things. My hairdresser, now he’s a fruit, but there’s no way that nice Benjamin likes it up the ass.”

“Ma!” I cried, shocked and appalled at her language.

She just shrugged, with a self-assured smile on her face. “Sorry, sweetie, but it’s true. And you should capitalize on it. When I was younger, before I met your father, I knew a boy—”

I turned up the radio, drowning out her words. I think she might have kept on speaking, but I tuned her out as best I could, concentrating on the road and the blasting music.

The song ended, and I prepared myself for the worst, but my mother’s voice wasn’t audible in the silence that now filled my little second-hand BMW. Evidently she’d finished her long speech of things that I never, ever wanted to know about my mother. She looked at me expectantly.

“That’s nice Ma,” I said with a vague nod. A DJ was saying something unintelligible. A cow standing by the side of the road looked up at me as my car drove past, an expression of slight confusion on its cud-chewing face. I abruptly became aware of how cramped my legs were, and how long it was since I’d had anything to drink. This whole trip out to see my goddamn relatives suddenly seemed much more trouble than it was worth.

And as if that weren’t enough, some truly bad music came on the radio. Not mediocre-band bad or lead-guitarist-has-a-hangover bad, or even musicians-with-plump-Polish-sausages-taped-to-their-fingers bad. It was some little kid trying to sing La Bamba. God, I’d liked that song when I was little, but I’d never sounded that bad.

Holy hell, had I sounded that bad?

I knew my parents had a recording of me when I was around seven or so, singing that song, but whenever they were feeling particularly cruel and played it for company, I would just stare at a wall and concentrate on repressing the memory. Still, I don’t think I sounded as bad as the tinny little voice issuing from my car’s speakers.

Except…

I leaned closer to the radio, listening intently.

My mother’s head snapped around to stare at me. “Why don’t we listen to that nice jazz station?” she asked hurriedly, a little too cheerfully, lunging for the dial.

I slapped her hand away. “Shh,” I ordered, still listening carefully.

“Mom,” I asked slowly, icily, turning to stare at the road again, my back ramrod-straight and my hands clenched on the steering wheel, “why is there a recording of my seven-year-old self singing La Bamba playing on Public Radio?”

My mother turned white and her mouth dropped open. “That was another little superstar,” said the DJ, sounding way too into it—like he’d just downed three bottles of Mountain Dew. “That was the second clip in the LITTLE SUPERSTAR series. Our listeners send us clips of themselves as kiddies, singin’ their hearts out, and whoever the public likes best wins themselves a chance to sing with the stars, in a LIVE concert in LOS ANGELES!” Dear god, you could hear the capitalization in his words. “This latest one was submitted by Irma Goldstein of Cambridge, New York, of her seven-year-old daughter Sharon singing La Bamba, by Los Lobos. Let’s see how close she got!”

With that, the opening strains of the actual song began to issue from the speakers. I reached for the knob and clicked off the radio.

“What the hell?” I yelled into the silence, my voice cracking. “Mom, did you sell a recording of me to a radio station?!”

“Honey, I, I,” my mother stammered, “I never thought you’d hear that. I didn’t sell it to them, either, I just sent it in, and—”

“What the hell, Mom?” I screeched. “Is that even legal?”

“I-I’m sure it isn’t anything… Honey,” she said desperately, “aren’t you happy? You were just on the radio!”

“No, I’m not happy! The entire world just heard me at age seven, singing like shit!”

“Well…” said my mom, helplessly. “Well…”

I gritted my teeth and stared straight ahead, my knuckles on the steering wheel turning white. What the hell was wrong with my mother?

“Well honey, I played that recording for Benjamin once when he was over and you were in the bathroom. He thought it was cute. Maybe you two could—”

With a grimace, I reached for the radio and turned on Los Lobos again, twiddling the volume up to ear-shattering.

It was going to be a very long trip.