I've been on a mission these past few weeks. The task seems pretty basic but has proven to be completely impossible. When I lived back in Nebraska, the normal world, The Good Life, you might say a girl could find a radio anywhere. They were all over the thrift stores, at gas stations, dangling from the necks of well-informed stray dogs. So when I moved here two years ago and was in the middle of negotiating what I could pack into my 1978 Dodge Aspen honey of a stationwagon, the radio collection was easily cut out of the picture. That's right! A collection! Literally dozens of radios .
For reasons of proximity, I have been going to Freddies- two blocks away and looking at the four radios they sell about twice a week for the last three weeks. As a way to punish myself and scold my idiot judgement for leaving my radio goldmine in Lincoln, I go to Walgreens about once a week. There I am stared at blankly by the guy who is annoyed I am taking time out of his hobby snooping through other people's photo negatives.
Last Monday when I asked to see a little plastic radio that was light blue and had a CD player on the front of it-the only one that I had actully liked this entire time-he told me not to get it because it was a piece of crap. I couldn't believe he said that. Just because I see him once a week every week doesn't mean he can take that casual, you're my stupid, tasteless little sister tone with me, I wanted to say. I didn't but when I tried to convey the idea with my eyes he stared blankly back, double daring me to try it. He wouldn't even get it off the shelf for me. I stomped off as he rolled his eyes at me in obvious digust of my poor taste. I turned back around with every intention of saying an amazing thing that would make him burn all night and turn and toss on his no doubt filthy pillow for hours just as I heard the dumb photo machine jam and screech.
At least there is that. I went home and listened to the girl next door play the organ she had gota at some point when I was back home for Christmas and sulked about my useless attempts to arm myself with a radio to block her out. I hate her now. I sat on my bed listening to her, thinking about what her and that guy from the photo counter would be like if they were just people I hung out with, people sitting on my furniture, sharing a thing of wine with me and playing with Gambit.
I bet they'd be the kind of people who would try to pretend to be thinking about a news story they had read a "while back" when they were really just reading notes and stuff on my desk.
When I was exploring NE Portland on Thursday on my way to an appointment, I happened upon a Radio Shack. No WAY! How could I not have thought of this sooner? Need a radio? How 'bout a radio store, Miss? Thank you! and Finally! I thought as I went into the store. As the store was almost completely empty, the first thing I noticed as the stiff door slowly swung back into its closed and please don't open me again position, was the thread bare, navy blue carpet. There were two displays of cell phones.
The salewoman came out from the back and asked me what I needed and when I said "radio" she twisted the right side of her mouth and after a what seemed like a full minute asked me what kind. Oh, just a table radio, I said relieved at finally coming to the end of my radio battle. Oh, we don't got those. We only have this one stereo here and I think it has a radio on it. At this point I turned and looked her straight in the eyes, making sure to hook her eyes on mine before casting my gaze over to the large sign on the wall "RADIO SHACK" it said. Turning back to her, making sure she was seeing the same words I was, I thanked her with tears welling up in my eyes and asked her for directions to the office I was heading to. Naw, I ain't too familiar with this neighborhood she said.
I learned from a toothless man at the busstop right outside the store that the street I was looking for was two blocks down. As I was walking the few streets to my office, I realized that Radio Shack is a drug front and she must have thought I was just as crazy as I thought she was.
