(too long.)

Lauren's parents have a "Florida car," which happens to be the very same, trusty Toyota that she carted me around in all through high school and beyond, when I moved to New York City and suddenly decided that getting behind the wheel of a moving vehicle was the risk-equivalent of bungee jumping or stepping out blindfolded in front of a train.

Unlike us, the car has aged since then -- locks are rusty, windows are temperamental, and, most disturbingly, the radio no longer functions as anything other than a display area for the schizophrenic digital clock.

This might not be such a catastrophic state of affairs, if one of us -- not mentioning any names, here -- hadn't decided early on that in order to pass the time on long, flat drives up and down the gulf coast, we would simply sing our own songs.

Did I say songs? That's kind of misleading. Because ONE OF US -- possibly the one of us other than the one of us that's um, you know, me -- not only decided that the go-to activity for this car-heavy, radio-free trip would be singing songs, but that it would be THE SAME SONG ALL THE TIME. FOREVER. UNTIL ONE OF US REACHES ACROSS THE OTHER ONE OF US AND STEERS THE CAR INTO AN ALLIGATOR-INFESTED SWAMP. THE END.

And this is where we move into slightly more embarrassing territory, because in order to answer the one question that I know must be tearing each and every one of you apart, limb from limb, in gut-wrenching suspense, I am forced to admit to the fact that there was a certain period of time when Lauren and I both fancied ourselves the # 1 and 2 fans of a certain, Irish pop group known as The Cranberries.

(Please --we were fourteen, and disaffected, and totally related to Dolores and her Northern Irish angst.)

And so, the problem isn't so much the fact that we are suddenly slaves to a certain sticky melodic jingle -- and when I say slaves, I mean that we live in service to this song, every waking moment of every day, we are singing it, we are humming it, it creeps inside of every silence that falls between us, it never, EVER LEAVES -- but the fact that the lyrics we sing on constant-repeat are evocative of a mother who has tragically lost her child to an interminable, unfeeling religious war -- prompting us to spontaneously erupt with sunny lines like: "How could you hurt a child?" or, the classic: "Nine months is too long...too long...too long..." while casually applying sun-tan lotion, flipping through a magazine, or pondering what combination of vegetable - plus - grain -plus-soy-bean concoction we'll have for dinner tonight.

I'm thinking now that, on our way to the Red Sox spring training game we'll be attending tomorrow afternoon, I might insist that we each listen to our own pair of headphones, attached to our own, varied selection of iPod splendor -- if only to ensure that when Manny knocks in a home run we don't accidentally shout something along the lines of:

"There's a PLACE for the baby that DIES!!!"