From the album Manning Fireworks
This is a song about a man stuck in the wrong life, using roadkill imagery and drunk driving jokes to admit he ended up in seminary because love did not work out. The Rudolph metaphor is not cute. It is a flattened reindeer and a flattened future.
Rudolph waking up in the road / Dew dripping off his red nose / Blue and black tire track torn / Through a beautiful doe
Lenderman turns the Christmas icon into roadkill, mixing gore with tenderness. The red nose is not glowing anymore, just part of the wreckage, and the doe adds a second layer of loss.
Deleted scene of Lightning McQueen / Blacked out at full speed
A Pixar punchline crashes into the death imagery. It sounds like a throwaway joke until you realize it is confession, the speaker identifying with a cartoon car that lost control.
How many roads must a man walk down 'til he learns / He's just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse 'til it burns
Lenderman hijacks the Dylan line to mock himself. The answer is not wisdom. It is that he messed around in a religious setting and got burned for it.
I wouldn't be in the seminary if I could be with you / If I could be with you
The whole song lands here. Seminary is not a calling. It is a backup plan, the place you go when the person you wanted did not want you back.
Lenderman does not try to make seminary sound noble or redemptive. It is just where he ended up after the crash. The song does not offer clarity, just the blunt fact that some people are living their second choice.