A Year of Blogging: August 20, 2011

August 20 was 'National Radio Day'. The radio seems to play less of a role in my life than it used to. There was a time that I didn't go a day without listening to the radio for hours at a time. Now, I catch it when I'm in the car. My commute is about 3 minutes each way, unless I get stopped at the train. So I only hear snippets of conversations or songs, sometimes I just hear commercials. When I was 10 or 11, I bought a boombox. It had detachable speakers and a dual tape deck. It took up most of my dresser, but it was state of the art! I could carry it outside and set it up so that I could read or sunbathe (yes, I used to do it a little). My alarm clock was a clock-radio, so I had two radios in my room. I woke up in the morning to the radio. Our school started at 7:15am, and since Mom, Laura, and I all had to get showers and get out of the house at about the same time, and we had one bathroom, I got up at 5:15. My alarm went off at 4:30, to allow myself time to wake up. I've never been a person who could jump out of bed when the alarm goes off. I have to ease into it. So I heard the farm report and the trucking report on the radio. Then I went downstairs, where Dad had the AM station on. 810 WGY was always the best with school closings, sometimes reporting them earlier than other stations. It was always on in the mornings, even on weekends. We ate our breakfast in the kitchen listening to the radio. When I went upstairs to get dressed and do my hair and makeup, I turned on my boombox to the country station. I loved listening to the morning show, The Breakfast Flakes. I was a huge fan. Listeners could submit their loved ones' birthdays, and the Flakes would call people and wake them up on air for their birthday. They sang a song to the poor birthday person. It was kind of cheesy, but I had the honor of having it done several years on my birthday. Dad usually went to work before we left for school, so he often did it so he could hear me on the radio. When I started driving, I always drove with the radio. I can't drive in silence. At school, my friend Jason and I parked next to each other and cranked up our radios. We both drove station wagons that had been handed down from our Moms. His was a Chevy and mine was a Ford, so we tried to outdo each other with the radios. After school, I went to my room to do my homework with the radio playing in the background. Mom quickly learned that sending us to our rooms was not an effective punishment. I was happiest in my room- I curled up on my beanbag chair, grabbed a book, and turned on my radio. I needed nothing more! How times have changed. Even four years ago, I relied on the radio in the car to give me information about traffic or weather on my commute. Now, since I have such a short commute which is basically through my neighborhood, I don't need to know. There are no traffic jams, no accidents closing the roadway. And if there are, I'd know it before the radio station does. I don't listen to the radio at home. My parents no longer rely on the radio for the news in the morning- they turn on the TV. I wonder when their kitchen radio was last turned on. I do listen to the radio at work a lot, because it gets kind of boring being in my part of the building alone for several days a week. But even that isn't the traditional radio. I listen to Pandora, a free Internet radio. I get to choose the music, and it plays only what I like. It's a long way from the big boombox, and waiting for hours to hear your favorite song.