ALL I DID ON MY RADIO STINT WAS GIGGLE LIKE A KID

One of my friends, Bobby Dee, hosts a weekend radio show called “Bobby Dee’s Rock ‘n Roll Caravan,” which airs on WNHN and features songs mostly from the 1950s and ‘60s. He often asks me if I’d like to be a guest on the show sometime.

So far, I haven’t given him a definite answer, even though I must confess I really do enjoy being on the air. In fact, I once had, many years ago, a regular stint on WJJY Radio in Concord, NH, where I interpreted people’s dreams live on the air.

One day, after I’d finished my usual hour of dream interpreting on WJYY, Suzanne Foxx, half of the morning team on the Kevin Hilley Morning Wake-Up Show at the station, announced she was going to be taking a week-long vacation.  Kevin, saying he already felt lost without an on-air partner, asked me if I’d like to fill in for her.

It sounded like a fun idea, but a couple things made me hesitate.  For one thing, filling in for Suzanne meant I’d have to be at the station around 6 a.m., which also meant I’d have to crawl out of bed at about 4:30 a.m. – the time I usually went to bed.  Secondly, I knew that trying to fill the shoes of a talented person like Suzanne would be a real challenge for anyone, especially for someone old enough to be her mother.  But the worst part was that I, from the generation of the Beatles, Elvis and Herman’s Hermits, would be co-hosting a radio show that played songs by such bands as the Goo Goo Dolls, Matchbox 20 and Smash Mouth.  I was pretty sure I’d have no idea what I was doing.

So of course I accepted the invitation.

I’ll admit I was slightly apprehensive. “How can I possibly talk for three whole hours on the radio every day for a whole week?” I said to one of my friends.

She actually laughed. “You?  The original motor mouth?  Believe me, you’ll have no trouble at all!”

I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.

I arrived half-asleep at the radio station on that first morning.  Kevin was so full of energy, however, just watching him made me wake up. 

The first thing he said to me was, “Hey, let’s call that ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ TV quiz show and see if we can qualify to be contestants! Imagine winning a million dollars? We can take the test live, right on the air!”

The words “a million dollars,” made me temporarily forget I could end up making a complete fool of myself. 

So I agreed.

 

Kevin dialed the phone number.  A recorded message explained we’d have only 10 seconds to answer each question by punching numbers into the phone.  Our first question was, “Put these dress sizes in order, smallest to largest:  S, XL, XS, and XX.”  Kevin rapidly pushed the phone’s buttons and was correct!  We did well on the next questions and honestly thought we were going to ace the quiz…that is, until we came to, “Put the following styles of art in order, starting with the oldest: Rococo, Baroque, Cubism, and Renaissance.”

Kevin and I just stared blankly at each other.  “I thought Rococo was something you drink at bedtime,” he joked.

“And Baroque is what my wallet is right before payday,” I added.

“And isn’t Cubism something you learn in geometry class?” Kevin continued.

Needless to say, we failed the qualifying test.  No sooner did we hang up, did the studio phone ring.  A young girl’s voice proudly announced, “I’m only a freshman in high school and I knew the answer to that art question!”

Nobody likes a show-off.

Unfortunately, on that particular day, Laura, the station’s newscaster, was showing two communications students from Pinkerton Academy the fine art of radio broadcasting. As the two teenagers stood wide-eyed in the studio and watched Kevin playing with a talking Austin Powers doll, poor Laura launched into her newscast.  With every headline she read, Kevin would comically act it out with the doll, as if he were playing charades.  The teen girls tried to stifle their giggles, while Laura miraculously remained completely composed.  I really had to admire a woman like that.

The second day, Kevin told me, “You might not get rich being in broadcasting, but one thing you’ll never lack is food, coffee…or T-shirts with logos on them.”  No sooner did he utter the words did a man from the bakery next door come walking in and hand a boxed apple strudel to me and an entire pound-cake to Kevin.  And a few minutes after that, coffee arrived, compliments of an employee from a nearby convenience store.  I was thinking I really could get used to that sort of treatment.

If I thought Kevin had a zany sense of humor, Rob, the station’s meteorologist, turned out to be just as zany.  Knowing this, Kevin always had a humorous news item or topic ready to feed to Rob to get him rolling. 

One news item – and I swear this was an actual press release – stated that someone had just invented air-bag underpants for the elderly.  According to the press release, the pants contained a sensor that could tell when a person was falling, making the pants instantly inflate, preventing hip fractures. Rob and Kevin had a field day with that one.

“Can you imagine what those pants would sound like when they deflate?” Rob joked, making loud, gaseous noises into the microphone.

“Or imagine if the pants inflated while they were swimming?” Kevin added.

“Yeah!” Rob cut in, laughing. “The poor old people would go bottoms up, just like ducks, with their feet sticking up in the air!”

I spent most of my time laughing on the air.  I must have sounded like some kind of giddy kid.

Another thing I learned about being on the radio was that if you ask a question or make a comment, the phones will ring.  For example, Kevin often played a song called “Scar Tissue” (such a romantic title) by a band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  To me, the chorus sounded as if they were singing, “with the frozen shed, there’s a lonely view.”

I finally asked Kevin on the air, “Why are they singing about a frozen shed with a lonely view?  Did they write the song while sitting in an outhouse or something?”

Even though 90 percent of the show’s listeners were way too young to even know what an outhouse was, the phones lit up. “The band is singing, ‘with the birds I’ll share this lonely view,’” I was informed more than once.

Goes to show you how great my hearing was, even back then.

I actually was sorry to see my stint on the radio come to an end, even though it meant I could sleep until noon again.  

Still, who knows, maybe I’ll seriously consider being on my friend Bobby Dee’s show sometime. For one thing, it airs at night.

And I definitely could use some free apple strudel.

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 Sally Breslin is an award-winning humor columnist and the author of “There’s a Tick in my Underwear!” “Heed the Predictor” and “The Common-Sense Approach to Dream Interpretation." Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.