Tuesday August 8th

Day 47, Session 18:
Location: Brown Line from Quincy to Paulina.
First song: At a Medium Pace by Adam Sandler
Last full song: Aurora by Foo Fighters
Progress: 245-254 of 3940
Total Songs Heard: 253

At a Medium Pace was played incessantly at lunches senior year of high school. My high school radio station, WHHS, received a promotional copy, which was great for lunch play but terrible for actual on air use. The parental advisory of explicit lyrics... they weren't kidding. Of course when you're 17 all those things were extra hilarious.

I loved working at that radio station. The whole place was held together by sheer will... and duct tape. My only real regret* there was that, in spite of being station's sports director senior year, I never got to call an entire football game. Our remote receiver (I believe it was a hangar attached to an antenna) broke at the beginning of senior year. It took all the way until our traditional Thanksgiving day homecoming game to get it fixed. Unfortunately, I had been sick for a few weeks leading up to the game. We didn't know what was actually wrong until two days before Thanksgiving, when I was diagnosed with mono. Thanksgiving day came, and I was planning on getting to the game, but I was too tired to get out of bed. Finally, an hour after the game had kicked off I dragged myself into the stadium and up to the "press box." I remember making it through about 5 minutes of game time before I was too tired to stand. I handed my headset off to one of the other guys and staggered straight back to my car and drove home.

Later that same year, after I had recovered, I called several basketball games. Included in that run was a game where a sophomore from Lower Merion by the name of Kobe Bryant absolutely crushed my team. If I had any idea that he would end up playing for the Lakers 3 years later, I probably would have saved the tape.

*ok, technically there was one other radio station related regret. Freshman year I always sat in with a girl from my class who had a show Friday afternoon right after school. She was new at school and I had a huge crush on her, but never got up the nerve to say anything. It didn't take long for her to start dating some random guy, but even though she had a boyfriend, I still hung out with her at the station every Friday. The fact that I never had the nerve to say anything was bothersome for a while (at least until I finally actually started dating someone 18 months later.)