MOVING IN STEREO

RAIN

"Hot sticky scenes you know what I mean

Like the desert sun that burns my skin

I've been waiting for her for so long

Open the sky and let it come down"

"Rain"

The Cult

I had taken a partial soccer scholarship to a small college in Virginia. It was my first time being away from home on my own. I was nineteen in my second year and had never smoked a cigarette or drank beer. I had had the obligatory girlfriends in high school but had only been in love once. My second year was going by quickly and without any significant problems. In fact, it was going quite well as I had made a few friends that seemed like they would be lasting friendships. I worked a part-time construction job that I had picked up the previous summer and had managed to get good grades despite my less noble study habits.

By the time you get to college, you have been so berated by parents, teachers, counselors, and even other students about choosing a major that you often do so without much thought. Before enrolling in spring quarter classes, I found myself staring at the college catalog for over two hours one night in frustration. Looking at all of the majors that held absolutely no interest to me, I began to wonder why in hell I had decided to go to college in the first place. Then I remembered.

My dad stood outside the high-school auditorium waiting for me to come out from the graduation ceremony. In front of my friends, God and all, dad declared that I had a couple of weeks to figure it out. I could either get a job, go to college or join the army and get my ass shot off, but I wasn't going to lay around the house. He didn't mean anything by his statement except precisely what he said. So it was the lesser of all evils. Still, the idea of majoring in business or finance or marketing made me want to jump in front of a bus, but so did the idea of working in construction or selling shoes, which also answered my first question.

Upon enrolling in college, I became so focused on the classes that I forgot which direction I wanted my life to go in. I had always had a fascination with radio. I can still remember lying in bed as a kid and listening to a mini transistor radio my grandfather had given me. The stations were mainly inaudible, all but a few, but it was as if some sort of magic issued from it. I would lay in the dark enthralled in the music or conversation I managed to pick up, often not comprehending what was being said. That was not so important. What was important was the idea that I was a part of something bigger, something more meaningful by virtue of broadcast reception. When the announcer told me to stay tuned, I knew he meant it. They always came right back after the messages as they promised. Until I drifted to sleep, I was connected to some movement in the world far more important than my own. The little transistor radio released me from the world of my parent's divorce, moving to a new house, third grade, and math I could not seem to comprehend.

Since then, radio has been far more than a mild interest. I won my first pair of concert tickets when I was in the 7th grade, and it happened to fall on a weekend I was to be with my father. Much to my mother's chagrin, he let me go. I took my best friend, Jimmy. We sat with a couple of semi-drunken disc jockeys from the station who thought or pretended we were older and let us join them as they did a live remote from the concert where they were hosting Mrs. Heavy Metal, yes Mrs. as in married to Heavy Metal.  Incidentally, that was also the place I saw my first live boobs. From that point on, I said I would be a DJ.