The Feeling Of...

What do you feel when you fall asleep in the backseat of a car? When the car starts to move and the uncomfortable way the seatbelt buckles dig into your side. So you roll over, face down onto the plush seat of your father’s old convertible and now you start to feel the warmth and the soft rumble of the engine that lulls you to sleep.

Then the car goes over a speed bump and you’re wide awake once again. This time you roll over to face the ceiling and see the old juice box stains from when you were five. At this angle you could perfect see outside of the car window and you watch the blur of swaying trees, blinding lights and the red colour of the barn that you and your friends played in during the fall. The feeling of nostalgia hits you hard like when your sibling threw a ball at your face during your tenth birthday at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

Then you are reminded of the pain of the seatbelt buckle that bites into your skin leaving colourful bruises that litter onto your sides like sprinkles do on ice cream. Then you hear your father turn the radio on and music fills your ears but your mother’s laughter captivates you and makes you want to fall asleep again.

Then you are awoken by the blaring car horns of the midnight city traffic that sound like fireworks on the 4th of July. Then you are back to the pain. The pain that gets worse every second of the night, my dear how do you hold on so long? How do you not just give in and sit up instead? Why don’t you look out the windshield for a change? It’s as clear as your little side windows but bigger and scarier because now you can see what’s ahead like a crashing car or a fallen tree.

Are you scared? Is that why?

Now go back that barn and the old tire you and your friends turned into a swing set that hung three feet off the ground; where you and your dog played fetch in the summer when the sun scorched your skin like a palm on a lit stove.

Now look out the window again. What do you see? Are there stars? Clouds? The moon?

Then you’re back to sleeping and bruises. The vibrations of the car that oddly comfort you but also make the seatbelt buckle dig deeper into your side every time you fuss. The smelly sock that somehow found its way onto your face when your parents took a pitstop at a gas station by the highway. The feeling of joy when you find a sleeping position where the seatbelt buckle doesn’t dig into your side, but now your neck is craned at an incredibly uncomfortable angle that might possibly break your neck.

Now as for the question that was explained quite a few paragraphs ago, “What do you feel when you fall asleep in the backseat of a car?”