PLEASE PLEASE! Do not panic. I am okay, but I have had a run-in with someone famous. At least, he is the most famous person I have ever personally talked to. May be some day I will be famous.
Since I have moved to Calgary I have been working for Green Drop. So, I go from lawn-to-lawn fertilizing and driving in a small Ford Ranger. The truck has a CD player, so I burnt a couple CDs and have listened to them over and over again and I got bored of them and have felt too lazy to burn more. So, then I started listening to the radio. And I have been craving CBC, but I had searched the dials a bunch of times and I couldn’t find it. I was coming to my witts end listening to the stupid DJs. They talk so much that I can never hear myself think. Then one day, scrolling the FM thinking perhaps I missed CBC some how and FINALLY I find CBC Radio 2 on FM.
Now, I am not really into classical music and I have never really listened to Radio 2 before. But, I remember enough from my Music 100 class to know the names and the periods of music. The radio hosts are either very excited about the music, pretentious or ignorable. Which are all fine by me. Plus, I can tune in and out of the music without feeling to bothered by it and my ear isn’t good enough that it’s not like when they play Beethoven for the second time that I can really notice the similarities. Plus, I really like it when I pull up to a house and the client most likely has a stereotypical idea about what a landscaper would be like (all my fellow employees) and I have Haydn blasting in the truck. I feel as though it may be a small enough challenge for them to change their stereotype.
Anyways, getting to the good part. This one morning, I push the radio to CBC Radio 2 and I hear this guy talking and he doesn’t sound anything like the other radio hosts. He was talking about his hockey team and giving away free pucks and some other stuff which sounded highly atypical of what I had come to expect from CBC Radio 2. So he talks about giving away his free hockey puck and then introduces Vivaldi (or someone). I have to say, it was love at first… hearing. The juxtaposition between the music and his subject matter was/is awesome. I learned that I was listening to Tom Allen, Music & Company. I have continued to listen every morning that I have been working and hate to miss his show when it rains and I sleep in (but I do like sleeping in). In fact, I was so impressed I did something unprecidented in my life–I went to the website and emailed him and he just responded! I hope he doesn’t mind if I share, because it was very inspiring:
Subject: rockstarpoet!
Hi Rhett -
Thanks for a very inspiring letter. I’m delighted you’ve found our show.
Congrats are due on the following fronts:
1) starting life with an English degree – Don’t listen to anyone who says it won’t get you a job. It’ll be giving you much, much more than that in just a few years.
2) Going to Calgary – you gotta follow the money, and it’s there. The prairies will wait for you – they’re not going anywhere.
3) Taking the initiative to write our show and having the scheming pluck to mention the hockey puck. I’d like to send you one (see? Your degree is already paying off). What’s your mailing address?
Thanks for getting in touch and I hope you’ll stay with us. I’ll try to get some prairie music in soon.
Tom Allen
Thanks Tom. You made my day.
Cool!
Brenda you are always so insightful.
Har har.