Radio is a very transient business.  So much so that if you’re lucky enough to stay in one place for more than 5 years, you’re considered some sort of fixture.  People joke that you “came with the building.”  We tend to befriend each other quickly…to stick together…a sort of fraternity/sorority.  And even if I’m visiting your city for the first time and we’ve never met, if you work radio there, I’m calling you and we’re going out.  That’s just how it is.  Thats how you make friends. These are the people that become your social life.

The holidays throw a nice delicious wrench into the whole thing.  It’s one thing to hang out with your family, it’s another to see friends again.  Not just the friends you meet on the job or the friends you meet around town.  Not even the friends you met in college. I mean the friends that have known you FOR YEARS.  The people that knew you when you were still trying to figure life out.  They knew you when you got caught the summer before 8th grade stealing condoms from the local Payless. When the pic of you scarfing down a burrito like a champion (because you didn’t think anyone was looking) made it into the yearbook and effectively ruined your social life well into 10th grade.  The kid that got photographed as “teacher’s favorite student” because “pet” was so de-humanizing and “kiss ass” was something that came much later in life. THAT was the person THEY knew.  And somehow(unlike the rest of the school) they forgave you. 

Now you’re a super successful IT director, fashion designer, head of HR or radio dj and those are all but distant memories that come out only during an impromtu junior high potluck and elephant gift exchange somewhere deep in Noe Valley on a Sunday afternoon.  You’re reminded of the inequities and faluires of life that gave you GREAT friends.  TRUE friends.

As we carve our path, climb our ladder and make our mark…it’s important not to forget those people.  That way you don’t forget yourself.

Md