The moment you step out of college, into a work setting, and into some pseudo-responsibility, you don’t become an adult. You might fake it from “9 to 5”, maybe even fool a person or two with a clever ruse, but you’re not. You might binge drink a little less, wake-up naked in a stranger’s yard a little less frequently, and have one or two fewer illegitimate children. And sure, this is progress, but the steps to becoming a grown-up are less about what you stop doing and more about what you start doing.
It is a gradual process, like pooping a pine cone, and it only slowly comes into fruition.
In this umpteen part series, we will look in depth at the process, its individual attributes, step by step, but in no particular alphabetical order.
Part One – Listening to NPR
Talk radio is for grown-ups. No one calls in to give shout outs to the Roosevelt High School junior class or request “Low” by Flo-Rider featuring T-Pain (which is a bit of a shame). It is discourse. Sometimes it’s civil, sometimes not, sometimes it’s smart, sometimes not, sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes not. It’s people talking about stuff. Political stuff. Sports stuff. Life stuff. Grown-up stuff. Kids don’t listen to talk radio.
And if talk radio is the cookie aisle at the grocery store, NPR is the E.L. Fudge Cookies right there on on the middle shelf.
Unlike the scrumptiously delicious E.L. Fudge cookies, though, that are excellent and perceived as nothing but awesome, NPR doesn’t have such a clean rap. Imagine you’re O.J. Simpson and you didn’t kill Nicole Brown and Rob Goldman, no matter how innocent you are, you are always going to be seen as guilty. NPR is in the same conundrum, and arguably much less guilty, of crimes of boredom, stuffiness, banalness and generally seen by the youth as “lameo” (Side note: If you still think youth say “lameo” you also inadvertently have taken a step into adulthood).
It’s actually very much “not lameo”.
Well, some of its programming is. The classical music block is pretty bad. Garrison Kellior is funny, but he talks at the speed of glass bottle Heinz ketchup and with a lack of liveliness unparalleled outside of nursing homes.
But there is some really good stuff on there, too. “This American Life” is, 90% of the time, interesting; “In Character” and “Popular Culture” are always intriguing; and I’ve just started listening to “alt.NPR: Love and Radio”. (Surprisingly, as a sign of hipness, all of these programs are available as podcasts for your convenience and listening pleasure.)
The majority of these programs are people talking about life and elements of life. They tell stories. And as I said, sometimes they’re funny, and they’re always interesting. A lot of times the stories are relatable, able to put your life into perspective, or at least spur some thought. Other times they are absurd, and you get roped in because you can’t believe they are true.
And true stories are always better. They get away with more than fiction. You sit there thinking “bull shit, that couldn’t happen”, but it did and it does and the people on NPR are articulate, so the rope just keeps pulling you along.
Maybe NPR gets a bad rap from uninformed kids. PBS sucks with its Masterpiece Theater and Jane Austin films and America’s youth projectile vomit those feelings on to its sibling, public radio. This is not the case. Listening to NPR will distill those misconceptions. Or maybe, you hit a certain point in your life, a stage in your development to becoming a grown-up, that when you finally listen to NPR, you are at a place in your life that you can’t help but find it interesting.
In either case, and for whatever reason, once you start listening to NPR, it’s one small step for man, one giant leap towards Depends.
