Ohio Girl

There are epiphanies of all kinds. Mine started as I exhaled. I let my breath out and could SEE brain cells coming out of my nostrils and ears likes so many dancing bears. And then the family seated next to me all in camo—the mom’s a nice pink with rhinestones, the dad’s a complimentary, but manly grey, the kids in traditional green--they joined the dancing bear parade while the announcer announced we would have to take a break due to air quality issues.

We were being gassed and willingly at that.

I pulled my scarf around my nose and worried about the baby with the mohawk two rows down and then let go; let the carbon monoxide take me where all those weekends of acid-dropping never did.

It seems I had been laboring under an illusion. This was my next thought as Vyper interviewed awkwardly and as another driver commented on his tour of duty in Iraq.

“Were you thinking about coming back here to drive monster trucks?” the announcer stalled.

“No, I just wanted to make it back,” said the driver.

“Duh,” said the dancing bears in harmony.

I had been laboring under the illusion that I had seen everything. Certainly everything in the redneck repertoire.

I can be so full of myself.

I like Vyper, I thought, with his round belly and his shy, lack of interview skills. I like that while other drivers ran out and athletically jumped atop the massive tires of their massive vehicles that Vyper had to struggle up from below his beast.

I like Twisted Dragon and his southern drawl and his cute story about taking a blow torch to his corvette and crafting the MONSTER VETTE. The dragon.

And I don’t hate this spectacle, I thought, but was not clear if it was me or the bears talking.

Sure, there was a rough patch at the start.

When I saw the massive trucks in the tiny arena. When the lights went down. When the announcer said, and i mean actually directly said and I quote, “Let’s thank all the troops fighting for our right to have Monster Trucks here in Ohio.”

I mean, Jesus H. Christ.

And I never even say that.

NASCAR certainly carries the same message but it’s polished and buffed beneath corporate logos and glitzy fly-overs. Those boys have been trained not to say it right out like that.

But then came the fumes and the bears and the reflexive squeals when the Monsters began catapulting up and over junk yard cars to “catch some air.”

High Voltage went up so fast and so high it seemed certain he would go all the way over. Instead he became stuck on his end atop an old buick. My hands to my head I gasped and giggled and turned to see my nieces and nephew doing the same.

And just then the girls stood and shouted, “This is better than NASCAR.”

I do not agree, but the kids have a point that was punctuated in the autograph line.

Every driver stayed until every kid got to shake hands and get an autograph. Every kid got a sincere smile and every grown up a thank you. A very specific thank you.

“Thanks for coming out here and letting me have this job,” this was said to me, directly, by a driver.

As ridiculous as his job is, as much as I would trade his job for, you know, drowning polar bears, I got it.

I got that the same guy was changing the oil in my car last week and for not much more money he gets to travel and to meet people and to giggle and gasp right along with the crowd as he crunches atop discarded school buses.

“We get it,” sang the bears as they danced into the night.