Something I've learned about myself

Well, friends ... I've learned a little something about myself over the last few weeks.

I've become addicted to talk radio ... but not just to talk radio ... Oh No ... I listen to CBC Radio 1. As a kid I remember my folks (especially my dad and paternal grandmother) listening to CBC Radio. Turning the radio off just before the hourly news was akin to intentionallly giving my grandmother a stroke. I could watch them grow blanched and clammy should they miss their fix.

As a teen, I roomed with some friends in Muskoka, for a year. CBC Radio played endlessly in the garage. When I say endlessly, I mean literally endlessly. I could get up at 2 a.m., go down to the garage and Andy Barrie or someone would be broadcasting to the barn cat who lived in the garage.

Now why is this Blog worthy, you may ask? Coming to the realisation of my CBC addiction has changed my perception about myself - a change that may mean that my self perception is finally catching up with reality.

In my radically conservative teens, I thought CBC and their ilk were far too left leaning. They were clearly the kind of people who would unseat good, conservative, normal Canadians - our culture was clearly at risk. I would imagine English profs from York, in tweed jackets (yes - with elbow patches and pipes), and burned out hippies sitting around a radio that was blaring CBC radio. All the while this imagined audience would pat themselves on the back for being free thinking liberals (as though being free thinking and being liberal were somehow magically conjoined).

Fast forward twenty something years. My wife is off to work, and I've just dropped my daughter off at daycare. As I prepare for my day, I'm sitting in my 'den', clad in my plaid flannel shirt and jeans, listening to CBC Radio on my computer. I am now in the latter half of my thirties. As I stoicly sip my morning coffee, I have to face the fact - I am definitely NOT the radical fringe element that I used to be (completely forgetting about being urban - whatever that is). Maybe I never was 'radical fringe'.

To make things worse ... CBC publishes Podcasts - electronic versions of their broadcasts, in a downloadable digital format. Just what I need to feed my addiction. Another couple of weeks and they'll figure out a way for me to mainline this stuff straight into my cerebral cortex.