Week 13: Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

My love of NPR has become something of a joke around here... I'd say that I start a good 30% of my sentences with "So I was listening to NPR the other day..." or "I heard this story today about..." or some variation thereof. My love affair with NPR started five years ago when I started teaching. I had a half hour drive home every day, and after eight plus hours of wrangling adolescents, I found the rapid fire commercials and jarring voices of the deejays on pop radio to be intolerable, sooo I turned to the soothing sounds of NPR.

As it turns out, NPR for the commute was just a gateway listen. Pretty soon, I was flipping to NPR every time that I got in the car, and it wasn't long before I was downloading Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me podcasts to listen to while I cooked. I even added being interviewed on NPR to my Life List. Now that I don't spend as much time in the car, I use the NPR app on my phone to keep up. At this point, I get almost all of my news from NPR and in less rational moments, I'm pretty sure that Lakshmi Singh, Audie Cornish, Guy Raz, and I are all great friends. Also, we're in a book club with Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. Seriously, NPR reporters have the best names.

Six months or so ago, I started to feel really guilty that I have been taking advantage of NPR without kicking in my fair share to keep it going. Unfortunately, my guilt struck mid-unemployment, but I told myself that as soon as I got a job, I'd make a donation. This is all to say that my new thing for last week was becoming a sustaining member of my local NPR station. Hurrah! In addition to assuaging my guilt, I am looking forward to receiving some lovely new NPR apparel in the next few weeks - it's like a yuppy/hipster uniform!