The radio in my gym was tuned into the John Tesh radio show. Yes, yes... I know. My gym is primarily for old people. We've started to go to the wellness center attached to Martinsburg City Hospital where my wife works. The gym is very nice, a little small, with very modern machines that use computer monitoring to help you reach your goals. I like it, but it's primarily for old people. Tesh was talking about how long car trips have changed in our culture. They used to be family fun time, a time when all family members could talk to each other and fill the time during a long car ride. With the radio only being used as background noise if a consistent radio signal could be found at all. Tesh goes on to say that today's travelers are all plugged into their different devices, with the kids in the backseat listing to their iPods and playing handheld video games rather than participating in a shared family experience.
In my opinion and experience, Tesh is remembering it wrong. WAY wrong. In the 1970's, before iPods and hand-held video games, long car trips were silent. With us kids in the back seat absorbed in comics, travel games, word searches, coloring books, or anything that could be picked up at the store that would keep us quiet and entertained.
BUT....
but...
As a father, the whole idea of losing my kids to a set of headphones has been bothering me. I don't believe for a second that I would fill a long distance trip with conversation with the kids. But there is something of a shared experience when we're all listening to the same thing on the radio.
Which we don't. In October my son will be thirteen. My daughter is eleven, but thinks she's eighteen. My youngest is six and still thankfully acting like a six year old. But Ashton, the thirteen year old, has been acting like a (shudder) teenager for six months now. We have different music. And he will always choose his music over anything I would want to listen to.
A week or so ago, Ashton and Katie and I drove to New York City to drop Katie off with my sister for the week. Five hours in the car alone together. I had an advantage, though. Ashton had spent the week with my buddy Mario and his family, and had forgotten his headphones! They were in my bag, but I hadn't given them to him yet. So I thought I would try for the whole shared experience thing.
One of my (many) passions is old radio drama shows from the 1930's and 1940's. The kind that died off with the advent of television. I've really been enjoying comedy man Jack Benny and his show. That's what I listen to while on the treadmill at the gym. I get strange looks sometimes when I break out laughing while running. So I started off with a Jack Benny, plugging in my iPod and cranking the volume so Ashton and Katie had no choice but to listen.
Katie would smile at me occasionally. It's hard to know if she really likes something or just wants you to be happy. Ashton was in the back seat, rolling his eyes at the 'old' jokes and not caring if I was happy or not.
Okay, Jack Benny's not working. Let's move on. How about a different comedy show. The George Burns and Gracie Allen show.
More old jokes. More eye rolls.
The Shadow! How about the Shadow! With me, all hobbies have a root in super heroes and the Shadow is what first drew me to listening to old radio shows. But the Shadow would prove no more entertaining to Ashton than having his teeth pulled. Katie smiled at me politely.
This was not going well. And I have a lot of old radio shows on my iPod, but not enough variety to support this experiment. Failure loomed. One chance left.
A slow, creaking door started off the program. A long, obtrusive sound too soul-grating to ignore. A macabre-voiced host came on making gruesome jokes with a lilting, playful slant. The Lipton iced tea spokeswoman cut him off and tried to lighten the mood with her sales pitch, but he succeeded in controlling the atmosphere. "THIS.... IS INNER SANCTUM."
Ashton and Katie were quiet. They were quiet throughout the first murder. They listened intently to the grizzly details and mounting tension. They thought they had figured out what happened, and got uncomfortable as the police were involved. And then more murders. A twist! More blood! And a final twist that no one in the car saw coming.
New York rose up on our horizon and the GPS said we had about forty-five minutes to our destination. Inner Sanctum ended with another pitch for Lipton iced tea. I turned off the radio and put my iPod away.
A couple of moments went by. Ashton was the first to speak.
"That... was... AWESOME! I never thought it would be the guy! I totally didn't see that coming. That was really, really good!"
I turned to my right and looked at Katie. She wasn't fake-smiling at me anymore. She had the look of being scared and entertained and creeped out all at the same time.
SUCCESS! I was able to nail the whole 'shared family experience'. We ended up discussing the show, why it was scary, and who we had thought the culprit was before the twists had hit.
On the trip back, it was just Ashton and I alone. And he had his headphones in. I made him pull them out and then tried to talk to him about how his week had gone with Uncle Mario. More teeth pulling. At one point, he said "talking to you is PAINFUL!"
I plugged Inner Sanctum back in, feeling my victory to be short-lived.
I do have a passion for these old radio shows. The dynamics of listening to them are very different than watching television. And they certainly make car trips go by. I feel like I've grown to know Jack Benny and his gang just like my mother has come to consider herself part of the whole Regis and Kathy Lee experience. If you're interested in checking these out, may I recommend this website. RUSC ("Are You Sitting Comfortably") has an outstanding collection of radio shows that you can download and load up on the iPod, lickety-split.
Thanks,
DCD
The name of the game for my long car rides as a kid was "don't touch your brother". Just imagine 3 young boys very close in age sitting shoulder to shoulder across the back seat of a car. I think the radio was probably on in the background, but yeah, comics were key to making that game work. Also, there was a legitimate threat of the car being pulled over and a belt being used for purposes other than holding up pants.
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