Car Radio

I do a lot of driving, largely because I have a decidedly non-trivial commute to work. Heck, my mechanic always expresses surprise at how much the mileage has increased since the last time I took my car in. I never really stopped to think about it when I started driving to work, but that has had some unexpected consequences. Most notably, my radio is now my friend.

That usually means that I listen to a lot of the Billboard top 40, since that's what they play on the radio quite a bit. But even with several presets, I can only listen to the same music so often. It's a little bit like eating nothing but fatty food. Sure, it's delicious, and it's fun for a bit. But eventually, you start craving vegetables to balance it out. It's like your body knows that you've had enough of the "bad stuff," and you need to eat something healthy. So, I listen to the audio version of spinach: NPR. Don't get me wrong, I like quite a few of their shows (Car Talk and This American Life are a couple of my favorites), but a lot of the times, I do it more as a change of pace.

As you can imagine, though, I almost never listen to the same station for the full ride. It's just too long a ride, and there are enough questionable lyrics out there for me to be entertained for the whole time. So, I end up switching stations quite a bit. And that is where things start to get really interesting.

You see, I like to be efficient. I don't like pressing the button for the station to which I'm currently listening. That seems like a waste. If I'm listening to preset #1, there's no point in pressing the button for preset #1. That's just a wasted motion, especially if I'm trying to switch to a different station. It makes me feel just a tiny bit silly. So, I do my darndest to avoid pressing the button for the current station.

However, that one thing means that I always have to try to remember the current station. For the most part, I can handle this. If I'm concentrating on driving for the moment, though, this becomes a dicier proposition. I might have stopped paying attention to worry about the car in the next lane merging, or I might have simply forgotten because I changed stations twenty minutes ago. So, then, it becomes a bit of a mystery. For some stations, it's obvious what kind of music they play. If it's one of those, I can usually figure it out. If not, though, it's a total crap shoot. I have to push a button almost at random, to see if that changes the station. If it doesn't, I mentally kick myself. If I do manage to change the station, I silently cheer for my accomplishment.

Of course, this means that I constantly wonder if I know to which station I'm listening. It's not uncommon for me to wonder if I'm listening to preset #2 or preset #3 in the middle of a song. Of course, there's only one way to really find out. I have to press a button. At that point, I'm in a situation where I want to test myself to see if I had it right. I don't necessarily have a desire to listen to a different song, I just have a desire to make sure my system is working.

So, I end up pressing a button. That means that I end up having the exact same kick yourself/silently cheer conundrum, in reverse. The great irony here is that I have this conundrum precisely because I want to make sure I get the next conundrum right. If I didn't have the second one to deal with, the first one would never come up in the first place.

Either way, though, I end up having a series of slightly agonizing decisions throughout my drive. Who knew listening to the radio was so complicated?