On the Radio

One of the things I remember distinctly from my childhood is my dad's car. It was a maroon 1983 Mercury Zephyr. I remember so vividly the cracked maroon vinyl bench seats that scorched my bare legs in the summer and chilled me through my jeans in the Arkansas winters, the metal seatbelt buckles that burned my fingers many a time despite my best attempts to shield them from the direct sunlight while we were at the grocery store. I remember the weight and distinctive clunk of the metal door and the crank windows. The air conditioning I never remember working and the heat could barely be called heat. So it was in the Zephyr that I first let the summer wind tangle my straw blonde hair, soaking up the cool before a red light brought us to the inevitable dead stop in the dead heat. And it was in the Zephyr that I first encountered the likes of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Three Dog Night, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and NPR. Oh how I hated NPR. Particularly, I hated "All Things Considered," and although it was my dad's reason for listening to NPR at that hour, I still think my hatred exceeded his enjoyment. On school days, I would stew in the passenger seat over the great injustice of my life: not only did I have to haul myself out of bed for a mind-numbing, compulsory so-called education, I had to sacrifice my final few moments of freedom to equally mind-numbing prattle. Almost more than gym class, or the lunch ladies or math homework did I loathe NPR. Yet despite my repeated objections, I was subjected to NPR for the duration of my father's chaufeuring me to school.

And now, some years later, I miss the Zephyr and its pinching, scalding vinyl, its sagging ceiling liner, its funny smell, its various broken amenities and complete lack of cup holders. I have adopted my father's love of classic rock, though I prefer Led Zeppelin to The Who and he can't stand AC/DC. But I still have yet to come around to NPR. (Actually, I still have issue with their whole "such and such minutes past the hour" routine when giving the time. You're looking at the clock! Can't you read which hour it is?) No, I don't listen to NPR. But if I'm provided a link to a science-ish lecture on a topic I find remotely interesting, be it relativity or consciousness or monogamy and evolution or genetic deformity, I am compelled to listen to the whole thing. Dad still listens to "All Things Considered" in his new spiffy hybrid Toyota Prius and Spoot complains to me about having to hear it on the way to school. I try not to snicker as I wonder if the inexorable exposure to a radio program will alter his tastes in interesting subject matter in the same way they have altered mine.