The Slice: Getting to the truth about singing in your car

Here are 20 questions about singing along with music in your car.

1. What letter grades would you award yourself for performance gusto and lyrical fidelity?

2. Are you disciplined about sticking with one vocalist’s part in a song performed by a group or are you all over the place?

3. Can you remember, before they regarded you with scorn and disdain, when your kids thought it was fun that you sang along?

4. Do your attempts to imitate the signature vocal riffs of a popular singer make others in the car contemplate throwing themselves from the moving vehicle?

5. Did the timing of a certain song coming on the radio – a tune the two of you used to sing along with – ever help defuse tensions and keep an already regrettable fight from getting worse?

6. Do you play air guitar or air saxophone while driving?

7. Do you sing along with recorded vocalists of the other gender?

8. Do you affect that contorted “Oh yeah, I’m rockin’ now” face that makes your kids pretend they do not know you?

9. Do you find simple denial is the best way to assess your spirited attempts to harmonize?

10. Are you at all deterred by the fact you don’t really know the words to the song?

11. Just what is that sound you make when the Rolling Stones’ song “Shattered” gets to the part with “shay oobay”?

12. Do you suspect “the pompatus of love” is a prostate condition?

13. Do you regard it as a sign of your own sophistication that you like to sing along with the background singers?

14. Do you try to sound like Bing on “White Christmas”?

15. Do you try to sound like Elvis on “Teddy Bear” or James Brown in “Get Up”?

16. Does your car singing sometimes make you think Crosby, Stills and Nash missed the boat when they failed to bring you into their fold?

17. When a song includes hiccups, yelps and guttural growls, do you do those, too?

18. What should a sing-along song stylist do when some in the car like hip-hop and others prefer country?

19. How do you react when you notice someone in another car staring at you?

20. What do you do when someone in the car changes the station just as you (and Steve Perry or Grace Slick) were about to hit your high note?

Today’s Slice question: What are your credentials as a hunter-gatherer?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Some people in positions of authority used to eat Play-Doh.