Little Love #4: Radio Tuning

Little Love Number Four: Tuning to that exact radio frequency

Since before I can remember, the radio has almost always been on in my living space: in the car on the way to school, at night as I fell asleep, on Saturday afternoons around the house. A constant companion, more or less. (I should also mention that my dad was, for years, a radio reporter, so that probably factored into our family's near-obsession with the format.)

Last Saturday, I was—somewhat unusually—changing the station on my little clock radio. It had been a while since I'd wrestled with the dial, and I forgot the small sense of victory one feels when getting the tuning just right. There's almost an entire dramatic arc within the act of tuning a clock-radio: the initial frustration of losing your channel; the false triumph of hitting your station and (alas!) replacing the radio on your bedside table, only to hear further static; the tentative hope when, fumbling with your radio (this time still in its place), you think you might have gotten it this time; the final, humble relief when you sit back to a crisp, unobstructed frequency.

Or maybe it's just me.