Emotional roller coaster: Remembering “Drive” by the Cars

Whenever we heard “Drive” by the Cars coming out of Dean’s room, booming on auto play as he slept the night away, it only meant one thing.

Dean had crashed and burned on another date.

Even now, almost 40 years later, I still think about that time in 1988 when a bunch of young university boys entered the mine field of dating, had little success, but got some good stories out of the deal.

The song
Unlike virtually every other hit by the Cars, “Drive” was sung by Benjamin Orr, not lead singer Ric Ocasek. It was released July 23, 1984, the third single off “Heartbeat City”, the Cars’ fifth album, and went all the way to Number three on the Billboard Hot 100.

Heartfelt moments
The song caught a second wind in 1985. Not only did Benjamin Orr perform it at Live Aid in Philadelphia in the summer, but the song was part of a very touching video.

The creators were Canadian, the CBC in fact, and they cut together footage of a starving, emaciated child struggling to get to its feet. It was part of a report by journalisrt Brian Stewart. Bob Geldof, the driving force behind Live Aid, wrote in his book “Is That It?” that when that video first aired on British TV during the broadcast of Live Aid, the announcer was speechless and almost moved to tears. In fact, that video was played on the big screen at Wembley Stadium in London, and only so because David Bowie volunteered to drop a song in his set for Live Aid, so the video could be shown.

That song really can touch the soul.

Thirties wing
Now, on a much lighter note.

We lived on the Fifth floor of Kelsey Hall, in the Thirties Wing to be exact. It was called that because every room number, except mine oddly, was in the 30s.

As we got to know each other, one of the things we used to commiserate about was the girls we liked, the anxiety around asking them out, and the utter fear of rejection we all shared.

At one point, we even had on the wall, in smelly marker on a roll of newsprint, what we called the “Crash and Burn” list. Each entry had our name, the name of the girl, and the reason we crashed. Some of the reasons I recall included, “Talked too much” and “Too freaking stupid”.

The funniest thing happened at one point. Miss Teen Lethbridge had moved into res that year. She happened to be good friends with the girlfriend of one of the guys on our floor. However, he lived in the other men’s wing on our floor, the Teens wing.

Miss Teen Lethbridge
So, most of the guys in our wing tried to go out with her, except me because I was still way too chicken. One by one, the guys tried – and one by one they all crashed and burned.

The funniest part of this, for me anyway, was that ironically it was a guy from the Teens Wing who went out with her.

Oh, and we all knew when Dean crashed and burned because Benjamin Orr was asking us “Who’s gonna drive ya home, tonight?”

On auto play. All night. At max volume.

A small consolation
There was another point in time when a number of us liked this girl. This time, one of the guys asked her out and she accepted. We were all stoked.

He came home that night looking dejected.

“Oh no,” I thought. I was getting the smelly markers ready and starting to make my way to the wall with the newsprint.

Then he said the words I will never forget.

“She was the most beautiful girl in the world – until I met her.”

I laughed so hard. She had crashed and burned.

I even mused we should add her name to the list.

Parting thoughts
That time only lasted a couple months before we all spread our wings and found new and different friends, as happens at university.

Ironically, “Drive” resonates in so many ways. It asks us to reflect on our lives.

That was the case with our burgeoning dating lives, as well as the famine going on in Africa.

Afrer all, “You can’t go on, thinking, nothing’s wrong”.