The cloy sweet smell of car exhaust and vaporized rubber wafts over me and 154,999 others sitting in the bright Sunday sunshine. I wonder if brontosaurus, what with their walnut-sized brains and all, ever anticipated that someday they'd become jet fuel and responsible for hurling Fiberglas boxes around in a circle at 200 mph?

I'm at my first NASCAR race. Took six days or so to drive out here, seeing as how no matter how many actual lanes of traffic are available, Las Vegans will invent three or four more. Cones, schmones.

Any card-carrying guy can mimic it with his mouth, but how do you type the Doppler effect? VRROOoomm ... VRROOoomm ... VRROOoomm.

Pam, my dear friend and ticket benefactor, sits to my left; my sister and my two nephews to my right. They know the names of the actual human beings who will be driving these cars. They know that this one car is a Ford Taurus, and that this other car is a Monte Carlo. I can't see any difference, except for the paint job and sponsor decals.

Pam says Mark Martin -- like I should know who that is -- used to drive a car sponsored by Viagra. "What," I say, "they withdrew it because it got up to speed really fast and then quit?" My sister blows bubbles of laughter into her margarita. "Then it had to pull into the pit for 15 minutes while Mark nursed a headache?"

I think you should get an award for making your little sister aspirate margarita.

I look around. What would happen to these people if, as in a sci-fi movie, they had awakened this morning to find there were no baseball caps?A guy beckons his buddy to take his picture, stands and removes his T-shirt. Farm boy's body. Neither fat, nor buff, nor svelte. Guy doesn't even try to flex. I guess I'm at a loss as to why his shirt is off.

Hey, that car there is sponsored by Nicorette. My 10-year-old nephew scolds me: "That car is Jeff Gordon's car!" OK, so have me killed. Still, you gotta love the irony. Nicorette has decided to get out the message to stop smoking by putting its name on a machine that is going to bathe us in toxic fumes for the next three hours. My little sister, her lungs now cleared of ice and tequila, begins to regret sitting with me.

My oldest son and I pick "our car" based on a precise, technical criterion: We decide it looks the coolest. "Who drives it?" I ask. My son shrugs: "Uh, Terry?" Fine by me. We begin to shout for Terry, which tears it for my little sister. She says she can't sit with me if I'm gonna shout "Go, Terry!" every time Jeff Burton's car goes by.

My sons and I are only here to be polite. This is a concentrated slice of Americana in which I have never lived, moved or breathed. I have never so much as paused in front of a TV screen to glance at NASCAR. But my nephews dig it. And my friend is a real sweetie. For them, it's like me going to see the Beatles.

"Gentlemen, start your engines."

My boys and I are mesmerized. Holy Toledo. Geez. Uh. Oh my. Wow. (I'm a professional writer. You shouldn't try to type like this at home.) If Jimmie Johnson came up that fast behind the car I was driving, I think I'd just wet myself and crash into the wall deliberately.

I love this. I dig these people. This subculture doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is, which is more than I can say for the Fat Cat "getting seen" in the fourth row at a Lakers game at Staples Center.

Great. Just what I needed. Another expensive sports addiction.

Jeff Burton leads for a couple of laps late, but then has battery trouble. My little sister says that he's "my guy" from now on, that I have to root for Jeff forever.

Fine by me. But I'll always remember him as Terry.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for the Asking Human Matters column or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@reviewjournal.com.