You’re On the Air

I cried on the radio the other day.

No, I didn’t drape myself over a boom box to weep. I actually called into a radio show and cried. Live on the air.

And to be clear, I’m not someone who calls into radio shows. In my teen years I never once tried to win concert tickets. Like watching American Idol, eating mushrooms, or waking up early to work out, calling into radio shows is something other people do. Not me.

But I’ve recently come to know a talk show host—or should I say hostess? Her radio show, Childhood Matters, is about parenting. Or more precisely, things of interest to people who have an interest in kids.

The topic was milestone delays. And though I started listening with no intention of calling in, I got to thinking about my own dear Paigey. Her learning to walk at 21 months certainly qualified as a milestone delay.

There were folks talking about autism and other kindsa things that trigger most parents to stick their fingers in their ears and say, “LA LA LA LA” really loudly so they can’t hear any more. As if you (or your kid) could catch something just by turning your mind to it.

And frankly as I puttered around listening to the show, I was mentally separating myself from those folks too. Kate and Paige were busying themselves at their toy kitchen, preparing an array of wooden foods to faux-feed their dolls and each other. They were playing so nicely. Such a normal healthy little scene. I got a sudden strong surge to share a milestone-delay success story.

So I called in, and talked to the producer, who said to hold on a minute, and before you know it I was on the air, and next thing after that without having seen it coming, my voice started cracking as I told the story about that one day a year ago when our pediatrician quietly kindly urged me to have Paige “assessed.” I’d told this story dozens of times to friends and family, but it wasn’t until that moment that I somehow felt just how damn scared I’d been back then.

Of course, producers love criers. (I know, I used to be one. A producer, that is. Before I was a crier. I guess I have experience in both realms now.) Anyway, I eventually managed to get my un-sad voice back. And at that point, of course, I felt like I was just getting warmed up. On Paige’s second birthday, I told the listeners, she was zooming around the house squealing and playing alongside all the other two-year-olds. And despite the long haul it’d taken for her to get there, it was clear that she had finally, blessedly caught up. Nothing different between those kids and my girl.

I know I haven’t written about my adventures at the Olympics. Sometimes big, super-fun, once-in-a-lifetime things happen, and instead of writing about those, I find myself focused on the minutiae of every day life.

Besides, that adventure came to a sad end with the unexpected death of Mark’s amazing grandfather. The man was a brilliant businessman in his day, a larger-than-life family man, a reciter of poetry, and apparently a hell of a golfer. Kate’s middle name—Miller—hails from none other than Grandpa John and his wife, Lois. It’s a tribute I’m so very happy we made.

It’s weird how grief works. After my mother died I went to a Day of the Dead parade, expecting a torrent of tears. But nothing. And just a month after her death, I went through Mother’s Day strangely—nearly embarrassingly—devoid of deep sorrow.

But then one day, out to lunch at a cafe, a friend ordered an iced tea, and I excused myself to the bathroom where I sobbed and sobbed. In Target a woman told her child they were going home to meet Grandma, and I sat in the parking lot bawling, unable to drive. When I least expect it the tears still come.

Who knows if it’ll be that way for the people mourning Grandpa John. Surely I’m not the only one to wail in the Target lot. If the folks in Mark’s family are suddenly overcome by the random ordering of a beverage, I hope they feel a bit better on the other side of the tears. I’m no Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, but I do appreciate the cleansing effects of a good cry.

As for my emotional outburst on the radio? Well, when I call in some day to win Jonas Brothers tickets—something I assume I’m bound to do now that I’ve broken the seal on calling radio shows—the next time I’m on the air I’ll strive to exercise a bit more composure.

Don’t Know Much About History

Doesn’t it seem like William Safire should have some sort of Nielsen box set up, so the language trends he writes about reflect a wide array of American households, not just what he hears in whatever entitled old white man circles he rolls in?

Sure, there may be some technical hurdles to overcome before people are willing to have their voice boxes wiretapped. Still, it’s a good idea, don’t you think?

Anyway, until they iron out those kinks, I’ll just report here what I’m hearing uttered around the McClusky casa. Which is to say, the McClusky house. (In case you don’t speak Spanish.)

Kate’s modifier of choice these days is the excessively California-surfer-dude sounding double-header, “super super.”

During dinner: “Paige is spitting milk, and being super super funny!”

Attempting to influence me: “I let my boy watch a super super lot of TV. He says to me, ‘Mommy, can I watch TV?’ and I say, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes!’”

Observing a dead houseplant: “Mama, that plant is super super thirsty.”

I’m not sure where she picked up the expression. Figuring that out’d be like trying to track down the genesis of a preschooler’s perpetual runny nose. Where would it get you anyway? Easier to just accept it into your maternal maelstrom as a minor annoyance, and keep rolling.

At a dinner party this week, my neighbor Chicken Daddy and I were comparing notes about the progressive private schools we went to as kids. Or more specifically, about the pot holes of ignorance those schools left us with. Huge knowledge gaps our parents paid good money for.

His school clearly exceeded mine on the hippie groovy scale. They studied American history every other year, and in between learned about the histories of other cultures. “But get this,” he tossed out. “When we did do American history it wasn’t even about the presidents or the Civil War. It was Native American history.”

God, I just love that.

Anyway, as a result, he’s apparently well versed in things like wampum macro economics, but couldn’t tell you the first thing about what the U.S. Senate does.

This is fantastic news. It makes me feel far less freakish and alone about my similar vein of standard-knowledge naivite. Plus, I now know to never partner with him playing Trivial Pursuit.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I have the excuse that my school didn’t teach the things I’m stone dumb about. They likely did, but I was too busy rolling up notes and sticking them in pens I disemboweled for cheeky “Oh, here’s your pen back, Pam” under-the-teacher’s-nose note passing.

Being caught up in all-consuming God-this-class-is-boring-but-isn’t-Dean-Klitzner-sooo-cute? brain activity seemed like a good thing for me to be doing at the time. You know, instead of laying down fundamental knowledge that would serve me in a lifetime’s worth of jobs, cocktail party banter, and trivia games played drunkenly at rental ski houses. Oh well.

So my brain’s lacking some standard info it really should contain, but as a tragic counter balance it’s brimming with crap that’s of no discernible use at all. I mean, if I could have a yard sale and clear some of the worthless knowledge out, it’d be a long day and all, but I think I could make some serious bank, even if I sold it all cheap.

And I can’t even imagine what I could do afterwards with that freed up brain space! I could maybe retain the fact once and for all that Mark’s birthday is November 19th, not the 17th. Or memorize a big chunk of Pi, or be able to recite the names of all the state flowers.

One of the things that for some reason I’m chock full of—and have been lugging around with me for decades now—is, tragically, radio jingles from the 70s and 80s. Ads for a random assortment of currently likely-defunct Rhode Island businesses.

There’s one for some big car dealership that used to be in Warwick. And of course, who can’t reel off the Van Scoy Diamond Mine song? Most locals can summon those verses faster than the date of their wedding anniversary.

But long before Van Scoy set the small state’s standard for advertising ear worms, a jingle for a New England grocery chain called Fernandes ruled the airwaves. My three older sisters adored that one. Or rather, they loved mocking it.

And really, how couldn’t they? It was sung un-ironically in a wretched—or rather wicked—Rhode Island accent. And one thing that bound us Bruno gals together, was our shared superiority complex about—of all things—our elocution. Pride in how distanced we felt from the take-an-R leave-an-R masses that surrounded us. The name Martha, for example, is pronounced back home Maaaath-UR. Simply take the ‘r’ from where it belongs in the beginning of the word, and tack it on the end where it doesn’t. It’s nearly as complex a linguistic formula as Zoom’s Ubbi Dubbi language (which I also happen to speak fluently, though it wasn’t the primary language spoken in our home growing up).

So the Fernandes ad went—and I’m deferring (in part) to phonetics here—”SOO-puh SOO-puh MAH-kit with a lot more speh-SHILLS every daaaaaaaay! Fih-NAN-deez knows the waaaay!”

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in the meeting where someone tossed out the dazzling “super supermarket” marketing concept. And where someone else cried out “It’s brilliant!” and they linked arms and vowed that together they’d spin it into commercial gold.

If you ask me, that’s the kind of history they should write about in text books.

I know it seems like it’d benefit me more knowing what the Speaker of the House does, instead of having scads of lame, outdated radio jingles committed to my everlasting memory. But hey, I’ve made it this far in life, and I feel like what I don‘t know hasn’t really made me miss out on a lot. And for that I am super super grateful.