When you're 17, one of the best things to do on a Saturday night is to sit on the hood of your car, turn up the music and look out at the stars, dreaming of the places you want to go, the dreams you have. Maybe you share it with someone, someone you've been with for a few months, you share many of the same dreams.

Escaping. It doesn't really matter what you're escaping, be it the confines of a small town, the pressures of suburbia, or even just your parents. Maybe you're just waiting. Waiting for your turn to get out, get to what your life should really be. The pressure of school, the futility of the dead end part time jobs, the inevitability of waiting, working for those things in the eye of your mind.

The music, the solitude, the fresh air, the wistfulness that is at times both melancholy and joyful, brimming at the edge of your thoughts. If you could make something happen right then, with the touch of your fingertips, already sensitive from the overstimulation of thought, you would. You wonder if the people out there in some other small town are watching the same stars, dreaming essentially the same things. An escape to the big city, something the polar opposite of where they are. Wouldn't it be neat if only you could know who the people were five years later, just to see where they all went, who really lived the dreams, and the ones who forgot how to look at the stars and dream.

The music you listen those nights, it always stays with you. Even if ten years later, long after you've moved several times, sought those dreams, achieved them or not, the songs remain. Maybe you're driving down to the mall, running another lunchtime errand, the windows down, thinking about work, when you'd really rather not, and the scan button hits something familiar, and suddenly your there. Nineteen, a claptrap old car, full of angst, energy, more dreams of a rose coloured future than you can count. The sheer number of possibilities of what you can do in your life, all opened up,and laid in front of you. A boundless world, all for you. You're there, and in the present, they flicker back and forth. You wonder how you skipped by so many of them, what choices you made that went bad, which ones you really should have done, the loves you lost or never acted on, the time of waiting. You wonder if you waited too long, what should you have done instead. They serve as a haunting reminder for you if you didn't live up to your nightime thoughts, or as a confirmation and reassurance that yes, what you've done is what you've wanted. It's always a mixture of both, for you never quite live up to all the things you once imagined.

You dance, like the cliche says, like no one is watching, you bare your very happiness for no one but the open sky and the unblinking stars to see. Never dancing in public, at the company christmas parties, or even when going out to clubs with friends, you let your inner self break free, dancing, twirling, singing out loud, the very essence of what dancing should be, coming out. You realize, someplace fleetingly in your mind that just because you don't dance when you're not alone, you still see the real reason for dancing more than your friends at the clubs, dancing becuase it's required, a step in the ritual of dating. You wonder if any of them ever let themselves free, really feel what the dance is for, instead of the learned movements, peacocklike in motion and purpose. Your thoughts, your sheer happiness coming out in the only way it really can, alone under the stars. You find that the forced fun and overloud and hyped music just cannot bring your soul out in dance.

Spinning around, the stars spinning overhead, a wide smile on your face, feet skipping, steppng quickly, round, jumping, it matters not. You let your happiness out, and really, you become closer to who you truly are.

I wonder how many adults still realize it, the sheer simplicity, the nakedness of thought that comes from parking your car alongside a quiet road, or, better yet, in a meadow, shielded from prying eyes, and turning on the stereo? Or do they get caught up in the trap of adulthood, forgetting the innocence, the strength of their once powerful dreams. The police, if you weren't careful in choosing your spot, show up at some point, suspecting drinking, drugs or sex going on. It's futile to explain the truth, and even if you try, you're disbelieved. Adults, at some point, all start to think this way, assuming the more vulgar intentions than the oft-reality of what a night under the stars, and some music can do to your very inner soul.