Today was a beautiful day, and to celebrate, Azul and I took the car to the car wash and washed it. He likes riding through the tunnel of soap and revolving brushes, screaming when the rinse water sprays us for the last time, imagining we are being shot by enemies in space. Then we pull out of the wounded darkness and vacuum the floors and seats, Azul likes having his own nozzle and sucking up his pant leg instead of the cookie crumbs and random pieces of whatever happens to be stuck to the back seat. When we’re done, we cruise!

There is really nothing cooler than cruising in a clean car and listening to music on a nice day. And to bring back the nostalgia of my youth and cruising (you know, when your car was all you had and your most pressing issues were getting gas and cleaning your car), we were listening to old school music. Although my five year-old was sitting in his booster chair in the back seat cruising with me, instead a car full of friends, I still felt pretty cool! And then to make it even cooler, guess what song came up? Well, in an instant, we were “Going back to Cali,” with LL Cool J!

Oblivious to the lyrics I listened to millions of times over the years, instead I heard Azul, who was singing along even though this was the first time he heard this song, speak up from the back seat. “He said ‘beach’ and ‘peach,’ those rhyme!” I started to laugh and then stopped for a split second to think about the words we were singing and then laughed some more. With a shrug and an “Oh, well,” in my usual encouraging tone, I said “You’re right they do rhyme.”

The song continued in the background and Azul started to laugh again and said, “He said suntan lotion!”

Oh, we were rolling hard! And loving it!