Thursday, August 6, 2009

This Radio Life Part 3-Jump in my pool


One summer, I was a midday personality at a radio station in Detroit. The area was in the midst of a scorching heat wave. (As if a heat wave could be something less than scorching??)

I wanted to do a segment that would “take off the heat” so to speak, help people forget for a minute. Being the dork I am, I asked the production guy for a sound effect of water splashing sounds. I played it intermittently throughout my show and asked people to call in and tell me why I should let them “jump in my pool".

There is beauty in simplicity sometimes. The phones went nuts. A little something I was just going to fool around with for a while became a full-blown segment pretty quickly. The sales department was of course trying to sell it immediately, so shortly after I received a request from K-mart to host a grand opening, live in front of their store….broadcasting from my pool.

Radio is theater of the mind, so the live event didn’t go over as big as the powers that be would have liked. But it certainly makes a great story. In fact, it’s a favorite my hubby likes to tell.

It’s occasionally irksome when friends and family tell stories about my past…how I used to be in radio...blah blah blah. I’ve noticed when I meet new people now and I say I’m doing pro bono marketing work or freelance copywriting, they wear an expression of “ Oh whatever”. But if I say, “I used to work in radio” they quickly perk up. Sometimes it’s the only thing anyone remembers about me.

I’ve realized I could live my whole life like this….livin’ off what I used to do, because the truth is anything I do now or in the future will never be as cool…

Or will it?

It could be as cool as jumpin' in the pool ☺

Beauty in simplicity could strike again.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

When I left radio my Mom said, "how am I going to introduce you to people now that you aren't a DJ?"

I still don't know how to answer that :)