Doin Time On The Radio

In Junior High one of our favorite things to do on A Saturday night was to bug the DJ's on the radio. We considered them to be the absolute authorities on EVERYTHING that mattered to us. My personal favorite request to make was Angel by Aerosmith. On the nights when Mr. DJ would play it, I felt like a celebrity myself.  What power the DJ had. With the simple flip of a switch, he could make my whole night.

 The romantic notion was something I carried with me through high school, and eventually led me to Broadcasting School. It only took a couple of weeks after graduating for me to find a job as a DJ at a Rock station in Modesto. This was a dream come true, because Rock was where I wanted to be.

 The first weeks of being a DJ where a little overwhelming, but eventually I got the hang of things. Pretty soon I was able to run a shift with my eyes closed (which I did a few times, those overnighters are killers!). I loved every exhausting moment I spent on the air. One moment gets me the most though.

 One late Saturday night I was chilling in my studio. I was drinking some coffee and reading a magazine, when I got a call. I answered it, and it was some girl giggling and begging me to play a song. The irony was lost on me at first, when she said she wanted to hear Angel by Aerosmith. It finally caught me an hour or so later when I played the call on the air and started the song.

I remember staring out the window with my coffee thinking about how in a way some little piece of my life  had come full circle. I was no longer the kid calling in requests, I was the DJ. Even though I only worked there for a couple years, and eventually found work that had better hours & pay, whenever I hear a DJ playing Angel on the radio it gets me. I remember how cool it was to be the DJ.