Long live the clock radio ~ May 11, 2005

 David Heiller

The clock radio by our bed has survived 25 years of marriage, and our marriage has survived 25 years of that radio. I don^’t know which is the greater miracle.

Cindy has always had control of the radio.

That’s part of the deal. Note that I didn’t say that’s part of the problem; 25 years of marriage has taught me a few things.

1976 The year David and I met,
and the year I bought the clock radio.

She sets the alarm, which these days comes on at 5:23 a.m. When we want to turn on the radio, that’s Cindy^’s job, and when it’s time to shut off the radio, she does that too.

You see, that little Panasonic radio with the “simulated wood cabinet” is not as simple as it looks. From left to right are nine buttons: doze, sleep, time set (fast and slow), alarm set, selector (which itself has three options, off, radio, and buzzer), manual off-on, volume, and band.

So this morning, Sunday, May 8, when I reached over Cindy to turn off the radio, the conversation went something like this:

“Don’t touch that radio!”

“What?”

“Every time you touch that radio you screw something up!”

“What do you mean? It’s just a radio.”

“You always mess it up, and you know it.”

“I was just going to shut it off.”

“You don’t know how to shut it off.”

I paused just long enough that it proved her point. “Well, you just, I mean, there’s this switch.”

But she had me in her sights. I was history. The truth was my hand was going to travel from left to right, from doze all the way to band, and by the time I was done groping, we’d be listening to Vance Mitchell^’s favorite radio station, good old 1490 AM, at about 110 decibels.

So I let Cindy reach over, and with one simple digit, faster than the eye could see, she had that radio off. Wow.

That was that, until the subject came up a couple hours later in the car. I was fiddling with the fan and heat controls, using the same dexterity that I use on the radio. Cindy reached over and flipped a knob to the right setting, and somehow the conversation was back to that darned radio. The ensuing conversation went something like this:

“I can’t believe you don’t know how to shut off the radio.”

Silence.

“I bought that radio in college.”

Silence.

“We’ve had that radio our entire marriage.” Pause. “25 years.” Cindy is proud of those 25 years, and I am too.

I knew I had to say something. “OK, how DO you shut off the radio?” I guess I’ve been waiting to ask that question for about 25 years.

“You push the doze button.”

Oh. That made sense. “Then how do you turn it on?”

“You push the sleep button”

Now I remembered why I had never learned how to operate the radio. It didn’t make sense to my logical, Mars-type thinking.

At our 25th Anniversary dance.

Cindy went on to explain the reason why the radio works that way, and I remembered it as we passed Hurleys, and kind of had it in my mind by the time we hit Grabhorns. But at the top of the ridge, when the wind hit the car, I had blessedly forgotten everything Cindy said. That’s not always a bad thing, as 25 years of marriage can prove in many intricate ways.

My goal is to have this conversation with Cindy again in 2030, just in time for our Golden Anniversary.