Transmission

I have two good things to report:

1. It’s fall.
2. I got a radio.

Considering the fact that I’ve always wanted to be the type of person who wears oversized wool sweaters and listens to NPR, I’ve made quite a dent in my bucket list.

I can take no credit, of course, for the weather. Summer in New York is—quite simply—disgusting. Every August, I find myself on the verge of a humidity-induced mental breakdown. Then September comes, the temperature drops, and I forget my summer anguish the way new mothers forget the pain of childbirth when their cooing infant is placed in their arms. New York in fall is my cooing babe.

I can and do, however, take full credit for the radio. I’ve wanted one for ages, but each time I broached the subject, my husband would snort and shake like an irritated pony. “For God’s sakes Woman,” he’d say, “why do we need a radio when we have a laptop, a desktop, a stereo, an iPod, and an iPhone?”

Well, here’s why:

1. Though the laptop is grand, its volume is crap. I can carry it with me to the kitchen, but as soon as I start chopping an onion or rinsing a head of lettuce, I can’t hear a thing. (I neglected to mention that the NPR/wool sweater girl also chops lots of onions and washes lots of lettuce.)
2. The desktop is a temperamental beast that I avoid at all costs. You turn it on, you wait. The screen fills with numbers and codes, you wait. You hit F1, you wait.  You enter a password, you wait. To put this in perspective, I’ll share another fantasy: me buttering toast while listening to Morning Edition and then dashing out the door in a pair of stylish rain boots. It takes five minutes to make the toast. It takes six to turn on the computer.
3. The stereo is good for many things, but it doesn’t have an antenna. It provides audio for TV, DVDs, CDs, iTunes, YouTube, vimeo, Flip videos, and Netflix, but AM and FM are a no-go. I can enjoy Double Rainbow in surround sound, but I can’t listen to Car Talk.
4. As for the iPod, the only way to listen to radio on that is to download programs that have already aired. The sweater-girl is obviously nothing if not up-to-date with her current events.
5. And finally, the iPhone, which is my husband’s and I’m not allowed to touch. (That’s a total lie—I’m allowed to play Bejeweled if I ask nicely and promise not mess up his scores.)

So, two weeks ago, after work, without telling a soul, I snuck off to Best Buy and bought a Philips combination radio, alarm clock, and iPhone dock. I thought that final feature would help smooth things over when I got home. It did.

My new radio turns on when I press the power button. I programmed the time and exactly one station all by myself. And yesterday, I wore a sweater.