The preset radio stations in your car and what they say about you (probably not much)

Want to really get to know someone? The first thing you should do is watch how they treat servers in restaurants and cashiers in stores. That's going to tell you a lot.

The second thing to do is to sneak into their car (break in if you have to, this is important) and see what stations they have pre-programmed into their radio.

I suppose you could also see what CDs they have there, but for now stick with me on the radio thing.

Generally speaking, cars nowadays have far more radio presets than you or I need. My 2005 Honda Accord, for example, gives you the option of setting up to 12 FM stations and 6 AM stations. I need maybe half that, though I did populate them all because I felt like I had to.

But really, when I'm not listening to a book on CD, I only engage with five or so of my preset FM stations and two of the AM channels.

Still, even the ones I don't listen to often might tell you something about me, mainly that I have a short attention span and can't figure out what I want to hear.

Here are my radio presets in numerical/frequency order:


FM

• 90.3 WCPN ideastream: This is our local National Public Radio affiliate, which I really only listen to on Saturday mornings when they play "Whad'ya Know?" and reruns of "Car Talk." My conservative friends will tell me that listening to NPR poisons my mind.
• 92.3 The Fan: A sports talk station. Most of the guys on this station annoy me, yet I still listen. Am I that desperate? Apparently so.
• 95.5 The Fish and 103.3 Moody Radio: The two Christian-themed stations on my dial. I honestly don't spend a lot of time on either, but I at least consider it. That counts for something, right?
• 96.5 KISS FM: One of the stations I have here solely for the purpose of listening to when I have one of my kids in the car with me. I'm familiar with maybe 3% of the songs they play.
• 98.5 Classic Rock: "Classic Rock" used to mean the same five Rush songs played over and over. Now occasionally they throw in some early 80's Van Halen, which is nice.
• 100.7 WMMS: The Buzzard! This station has no identity now, as far as I can tell. You'll hear just about anything.
• 102.1 FM: This was "Adult Contemporary" when I was growing up, now it's at least a little more hip. It makes us 40-somethings feel better about ourselves for listening to it, I think.
• 104.1 FM: Very Top 40-ish. See entry above on 96.5 KISS FM.
• 104.9 FM WCLV - Classical: I'm really into classical music these days, so this is probably the station to which I listen the most. They're affiliated with our NPR station above, prompting me to throw some cash their way every month. I listen to "The First Program" every morning because the pieces are short and relaxing, and I listen to "Symphony at 7:00" whenever I have a long day at work and I'm still driving home at that time. Great stuff.
• 105.7 FM: "Oldies." And they're starting to play a lot of 80s music with which I grew up and which now qualifies as "old." Kill me now.
• 106.5 The Lake: Their motto? "We play anything." What their motto should be? "We play anything, as long as it's New Wave or Hair Metal released between 1981 and 1988."

AM

• 850 ESPN Cleveland: More sports talk and the main radio home of my beloved Lake Erie Monsters hockey team. They have "Mike and Mike" in the mornings, which I like and like.
• 1100 WTAM: This is our local 50,000 watt behemoth news/talk/sports/traffic station. Every city has one, and you unavoidably end up on this station from time to time to check on a traffic back-up on your way to work or if you just want to listen to a baseball game for a few innings on a lazy Saturday afternoon in July.
• Four other AM stations that I can't even identify: Because they're all essentially the same. I have almost no use for them, but there's an OCD part of me that can't stand the thought of these preset slots being tuned to nothing but dead air. I'm like that.

When your pets suffer from mental illness

We have a cat named George who is very special. And by "special" I don't mean unique and wonderful and precious so much as "should be in some sort of feline assisted living facility."

Everyone in the house agrees that George has a problem, but none of us agree on his diagnosis. One daughter thinks he has obsessive-compulsive disorder, while another believes he may be autistic. I can't say exactly where he falls on the spectrum, though I know something is not right with George.

For one thing, he's pretty slow on the uptake, at least in relation to our other three cats. This doesn't make him any less valuable or less lovable; in fact, it makes him far more entertaining to us.

I actually have a long history of pets with mental illness. Growing up, we had a dog named Bootsie (Or was it "Bootsy" like Bootsy Collins? I don't think there was ever an official ruling on the spelling of her name.) Bootsie/Bootsy had a big knot on top of her head, which my dad believed was some sort of brain growth that made her...different.

Later on, I owned a hamster whom I called Ariel who had extreme anger issues. She seemed pretty lovable in the store, but once I got her home, it was nothing but teeth and rage with that little rodent.

I made the mistake of placing Ariel's cage next to the fiberglass/nylon curtains my mom had sewn for my room. She (the hamster, not my mom) managed to reach through the bars and gather in some of the curtain material, which she proceeded to eat in great chunks. I'm guessing the resulting chemical poisoning did nothing to improve her mood swings.

Nowadays we own two chinchillas, both of whom I think are strange, but I'm coming to believe that's just how chinchillas are and that our two are pretty average, as chinchillas go.

Sometimes, your pets' mental issues can work to your advantage. Our cat Fred is a great example. Fred's problem is that he is obsessed. Specifically, he is obsessed with me. Fred loves me. He sleeps virtually on top of me every night, which keeps me warm. I love having Fred in bed with me. He's like a big, fat, loudly purring electric blanket. When he dies, I'll be sad.

And cold.

Sometimes crazy/obsessive is good.

The numbing realization that no parent really has any idea what they're doing

Howie Mandel said something once that still resonates with me.

This was when Howie was doing stand-up comedy back in the mid-80s. And he still had hair. And he wasn't so OCD about people touching him. And he used to stretch a surgical glove over his head and blow it up with his nose, which I still find hilarious because I'm an extremely simple man who will laugh at almost anything.

Anyway, Howie and his wife had just had their first child. He said that sometimes he would stop in the middle of what he was doing and say to himself, "I'm someone's dad." The point being that he was just a big goofball and someone in authority had clearly messed up if he, Howie Mandel, was allowed to be the father of a tiny human being.

I'm willing to bet there's not a parent alive who has not felt something similar. You can read all the books you want. You can babysit all the kids you want. You can take all the classes you want. But when you bring that baby home from the hospital for the first time and there are no longer any nurses around to take the little rugrat away whenever you feel the least bit sleepy, that's when reality sets in.

It starts as a low-grade panic somewhere deep in your stomach. And then it gets worse as you realize this is actually happening, and that YOU are the one who is ultimately responsible for the well-being of this impossibly small creature.

And you think to yourself, "This isn't good. I am not in the least bit qualified for this job. I am a Grade A screw-up who can barely remember to change the filter in my fish tank, and suddenly I have to feed, dress and otherwise oversee the upbringing of another person? No, this is not good..."

I remember when Terry and I brought Elissa home from the hospital. We were both dead tired (she more so than me, for reasons that should be obvious). Elissa was sleeping peacefully, as I recall, but when we unloaded everything from the car and laid her down in her little bassinet, we realized we had no idea what to do next. Not a clue.

I think we just sort of sat and stared at each other for a minute. Then we turned on the TV. Whenever Elissa made any sort of noise, we both jumped up and checked on her to see what was wrong.

That night, our first as parents in our own home, was terrible. Elissa continued making the sort of small, ultimately inconsequential noises that newborns do. And every time she did, one or both of us would jerk our heads up and wonder if we needed to go and get her.

By the next morning, we were wrecks. Tired, disheveled and most of all crushingly disheartened at the prospect of spending the next several hundred nights doing the same thing.

But somehow we got through. Night by night we survived. We developed a little routine where I would get up first whenever Elissa awoke, change her diaper, and bring her to Terry for breastfeeding.

Slowly but surely, things got easier. We managed to keep Elissa alive long enough for Chloe to be born. And then Jared. And then Melanie. And finally Jack. And somewhere along the way we learned what it meant to be parents. We're still learning, in fact.

I hope Howie eventually did, too.

(NOTE: Without going into too much detail, I have to tell you that I had a post written for today announcing the end of this blog. There were a variety of reasons for that, just as there were even more reasons why I decided last night to keep it going. I honestly just couldn't walk away from it. You guys are great fun and a joy to write for. One of the main reasons I decided to push on was my daughter Melanie, who told me, "You can't quit! You haven't written about me yet!" Every kid in the family thinks I write about their siblings more than them. But let the record show that Melanie is truly one of the most beautiful, smart, kind-hearted people I know. She's one of those kids who is good at a lot of different things, but often focuses on the stuff she isn't as good at. Which is a shame, because Melanie is just plain talented. She's going to go far in life and I can't even express how much I love my little "Shmoo" (we used to call her that when she was little). So there you go, my little Mel!)