After a certain age, it becomes unpopular to read aloud. It's almost as though there's a general assumption that everyone had enough of sitting on carpet squares throughout elementary school and that what everyone really wants for the rest of their lifetime is to read to quietly to themselves. Maybe that's what some people want. Not me.
The other night, I couldn't fall asleep. I'd done everything to try to ameliorate the situation: changed pajamas, reorganized my bed, listened to The Trapeze Swinger, read a short story. Nothing was working. However, it hit me a bedtime story would do the trick. I was sure of it. However, seeing as I was already laying in bed and wasn't in the mood to run downstairs to grab my only audiobook, The Best American Short Stories of the Century, I figured that I was out of luck.
And then I remembered online radio. Ah yes, radio! Surely I could find an NPR story or something. Eventually, I settled on This American Life, which has been a long overdue item on my Intellectual Enhancement Media Consumption List. As someone who is admittedly easily distracted, I had simply never managed to find the right time to devote my full attention to it. I first stumbled upon the show thanks to my brief stint with the Nerve.com personals, where the only person of interest I discovered was a UPenn architecture student who seemed fiercely intellectual yet laid back, though perhaps a tad too interested in politics for my liking. He had answered one of the personal survey questions, "What celebrity do you look the most?," with something like, "People tell me that I look a little like Ira Glass, which makes me happy. I love This American Life and would love to some day be as accomplished and intelligent as Ira Glass. What a guy." And thus, I owe a thanks to Mr. Nerve.com UPenn Architecture Man.
Anyway, This American Life isn't exactly like being read to, but it is a bedtime story. Thank goodness that it's existed since 1995. Looks like I'm good for the next 14 years. Maybe the whole "I like being read to thing" will pass by the time I'm 36 years old, but I doubt it.
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3 comments:
You can also get free New Yorker podcasts on iTunes. They're usually famous authors reading their favorite stories. Right now I have Joyce Carol Oates reading Eudora Welty. It's pretty cool.
Thank you!!! That's awesome!
I have read this post like four times now. Who are you, what have you done with my sister, and can you bring her back because I need blog entries to read. Thanks.
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