The writing prompt for 2/21 was "someone is playing the radio. . ." so here is what came tumbling out of my head following that prompt. I am trying to get back into writing for at least one prompt a day, hopefully posting my results will spur me on a bit, I could certainly do with the motivation. Now, being a true writing prompt exercise, this is a single draft, no editing, no fact checking, just my own imagination and the prompt it used to jump off into the great unknown of my brain's randomness.
Someone is playing the radio. The words come through softly, indistinct through the wall. It is not music, but not talk radio either. At first he thought it might be public radio with Prairie Home Companion or something like that, but it doesn’t sound quite right. It sounds older, somehow a truer sound than the junk that fills the airwaves anymore.
The muffled radio mumblings sound like home Not the home he knows now, which is no home at all, but a home from his childhood, back when families had homes of their own. There was no tv yet, and after dinner they would all gather in the main room to listen to the radio. There were some music shows that would come on, new singers or big band numbers. Late at night you could get classical concert style stuff. But most of the things on the radio were variety shows, or stories, or what you would call a sitcom if it was on tv today. And they weren’t these new shows with all the cursing and the sex, were someone dies almost every show. They were more wholesome stuff. There might be arguments, but no one would just cuss out the other person, there were real words in their arguments. And there was a resolution, they would work things out, talk things out and it would all be better by the end. There were spooky shows too, late at night. You could turn out all the lights and sit and listen to them in the dark, just to get yourself good and scared. There was no way you would go to sleep that night, not on purpose anyhow. And those shows weren’t bloody and gory and violent, that stuff doesn’t work over the radio. There was suspense, and the sounds in the dark that send chills up your spine: a creaking floorboard, a door swinging shut, the sound of footsteps. Everyday normal things that you heard on the radio then could swear you heard in your own house and you just huddled on the sofa praying that whatever was out there wouldn’t get you. But you didn’t turn on the light. That would make it all go away, it would make everything normal and ordinary again, and there was something delicious in the chilling suspense of the story being spun into the dark of your house. Those were the days he remembered now when he went to sleep, the days of the radio shows, and when he had a family all in one house together, and you could walk in and you were loved.
The programs on the radio these days were soulless, they didn’t care if you were out there listening or not. They didn’t care what you wanted or who you were or how your life was going. They just played their music and hardly ever talked to you except to tell about the traffic or the weather. The talk shows only talked about the bad, and there was plenty of that. Besides that, the talk shows were more shouting than talking, and they didn’t care about you either, they just wanted to yell at you or sell you something.
The radio was not what it had once been. The world was not what it had been either. The world had somehow gotten darker, colder, and less inviting with every year that passed. No one cared if you lived or died anymore, just as long as you did whatever you were going to do out of everyone else’s way.
But tonight someone was playing the radio he used to know, the radio that drew you in, drew families together to sit around and listen together, to talk and laugh together. Not like tvs where you get shushed if you say something and no one looks at anyone, they all just stare with empty eyes at the picture box. Drones. Zombies. Mindless and thoughtless as long as the box is on.
The radio show didn’t play on the real radio anymore, he knew that. The sounds coming through the wall would be from a computer or a cd, some little piece of the past captured and brought forward to remind him of better days. He knew it was not now, it was not truly real, only an echo of what had been. But tonight he was grateful to whoever was on the other side of that wall. He was grateful they remembered those old days, and that they would play those recordings. Maybe they were remembering better days too. Maybe they were just like him, lost and alone and searching for a way to get back to what had been theirs once. In his prayers he thanked whoever was on the other side of the wall for the gift they had given him this night, for giving him that wonderful memory, a simple thread to follow to find his way back home for a time. He fell asleep to the sounds of the world that was drifting through the wall into his dreams.
