E is for...

"Every Goliath Has Its David" by The Boy Least Likely To


Here's another story about what I listen to in my car.  In 2010 I was in graduate school for Religious Studies, and by the time Thanksgiving came around I was pretty sure it was a bad idea.  I didn't love it the way I thought I would, and the rapidly approaching reality of failing, quitting, leaving something undone for the first time ever, was sending my panic levels into overdrive.  The Sunday after Thanksgiving I had to drive four hours from my parent's house back to my apartment near campus, and I just couldn't muster up the nerve to go back until early evening.

Driving at night can be rough under normal conditions, let alone when every nerve in your body is screaming at you to turn around.  My body knew I was going to drop out about a month before the rest of me.  It was around eleven and I was within an hour of my apartment when I drove through a wooded area and a deer lept out in front of my car.  I slammed on my brakes, completely forgetting there was a car behind me.  Luckily they stopped as well, and the deer got past me, but a car coming the other way caught its backside.  That sound still sits in the bottom of my mind.  It was the sound of coming against what can't be overcome, and I knew the same thing was happening to me.  I pulled the car over right there on the side of the road and cried.

The car that hit the deer didn't stop.  In fact, neither did the deer, so I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who had any lasting ramifications from the event.  Once I got back on the road, I was so frayed I wasn't sure what, if anything, I could get up and do the next day.  Then something good happened.  My iPod was hooked up to my radio on shuffle, and "Every Goliath Has Its David" came on.  Something about the unassumingly perky and almost childlike tune, along with the fumbling, self-deprecating lyrics got me just the right way at just the right time.  I started to feel better.  It didn't save me from dropping out of grad school, because what I really want to do is write poetry, but it did help lift my spirits for a few days, and it still does whenever I listen to it.