Life is: hearing a song from someone else's car while you are walking through the parking lot with your bag containing the makings of a quite nice Italian dinner and the song totally takes you back to something really personal and private, like the first time you made out with a girl and by made out, you know that I mean like really got past just kissing for the first time, which just so happened to be at a church function and your friend was really addicted to this band and had them playing non-stop on their little mauve plastic boombox and even the kids over in the rec room playing kickball or volleyball or whatever the non-making-out kids were playing back then, were telling your friend to turn that horrible song off, and you kinda smiled a little bit which meant you lost your place in your make out session for a second and she started to wonder if she wasn't a very good kisser, which actually still haunts her to this day, and then a car horn lets you know you strayed out into the middle of the gray, slushy ice that still runs down the middle of the parking lot lane and when it startled you your day old french bread loaf that you were going to make homemade garlic bread with tumbles into the slush, but it was wrapped in that weird half paper-half clear plastic sleeve that every bakery in the world apparently uses so you're pretty sure its going to be okay for dinner and then you look up at the driver of the car and give them the mostly-polite-but-still-letting-you-know-I'm-kinda-pissed wave acknowledgment thing that we all do, even when we are really seething with hatred but we're in public and probably shouldn't act on it, and then when you hop in your car and set your bag in the passenger seat, taking care that the jar of the "expensive" sauce isn't going to fall over onto your middle console; just then the name of the make out girl pops in your head, even though 9 seconds ago you would have sworn that you would have never been able to come up with it in a million years, and then you remember the song and the way she smelled and you smile and then you drive home without remembering you forgot to buy the garlic you needed.

yep

Life is: those two old people who always dance at weddings, when the band slides into some old 40's standard played in half-time; their orthopedic shoes shuffling point-counterpoint on the scuffed wood dance floor and you can tell that the joints are hurting and the artificial hip isn't quite as stable as it was, and you're sitting there with a watered down gin and tonic in a too tiny plastic cup next to your hand that rests on the commercially washed and starched table linen and the conductor notices the old couple and gently prods just a couple of extra beats per minute and a couple of extra decibels out of the band that was really hoping for a cigarette break three songs ago and everyone starts to hold their breath because the finale is coming and he gives her a little whirl and everything falls into place for just that split second and then he goes for the dip on the last "wah-wah"ing note and holds her perfectly and she gives the laugh/blush/peck on the cheek and everyone applauds, and your date who you only kind of knew but had to ask at the last minute because the girl you'd been obsessing over at the bar turned you down, but in a pretty nice way that makes you think that maybe next time it would work out; your date is wiping tears away but she looks a little dorky doing it because you bought her one of those wrist corsages and now you feel bad that you didn't get the cheaper one that pinned on but then you remember the old people and start to clap yourself and kind of smile and use everyone's diverted attention as a chance to run up to the bar to get another too tiny gin and tonic.