How to survive being online
For as long as I remember, my day would start by waking up, going into the kitchen, making coffee, putting on the news, and then getting on social media. By the time coffee was ready I’d be freaked out about something. By the time Erika woke up I’d be freaked out about at least five different things. If she woke up first, the scene would play out the same, with the roles flipped.
A couple of weeks ago I woke up, walked into the kitchen and there was a song playing. It was pleasant and vaguely familiar, but I hadn’t had my coffee yet so I couldn’t quite place it. As I filled my cup the song ends and an actual radio DJ said “That was The Cocteau Twins and you’re listening to KEXP.”
“It’s a radio station out of Seattle. It’s pretty good.” We spent the rest of the morning listening to the radio and trying to see who could guess the songs quicker. A week later we decided to get an actual radio, instead of casting the app to our apple speaker, because we wanted the joy of letting the radio be the radio. We both grew up listening to the radio.
I still remember my first cheap little transistor radio. It had a single ear bud. I’d clip it to my belt and listen to Richie Ashburn and Harry Kalas announcing Phillies games while I did my paper route. The Phillies weren’t very good back then, and the paper route sucked, but having that connection to another world in my ear was nice. The transistor radio was eventually replaced by a walkman, the single ear bud was replaced by orange foam headsets, and with stereo came music. And that was nice too.
