As you may remember, the radio in my car is broken. Approximately five years ago, a CD got stuck in the CD player. For a while, I could play the radio and that one CD. Then the CD part stopped working altogether, but the radio still worked. A year or two ago, my husband spent hours upon hours trying various methods to enable us to listen to music in the car. The Nissan dashboard is not kind to those trying to disassemble it, but Isaac attacked it at least three times, getting the stuck CD out, attaching an mp3 player to the satellite input, checking all the cords again when things stopped working. We'll probably never know exactly what happened, but after ages of the radio working sometimes and not others without any obvious reason, it finally quit completely a few months ago. Doesn't turn on at all, and even if it occasionally shows life on the dashboard, no sound comes out of the speakers.
Unless we're on a longer trip and all of the boys are asleep, I really don't mind the lack of radio. Our trips are full of noise, most of it pleasant. Levi counts, of course, but more often, I sing whatever he requests: all the verses to "Holy, Holy, Holy," as many as I can remember of "Come, Christians, Join to Sing" and a slew of other hymns, the "state song" (Fifty Nifty United States -- he now knows about 20% of them), others. Owen chimes in with "Twinkle Widdle Star" and "Skid-a-dink-I-wuv-you." Even Silas, when he is awake, adds his voice to the mix. When we're not singing, I'm answering questions about electricity [how does the traffic light turn on?], hypothesizing about the location of the moon during the day, explaining ad nauseam why we can't keep going when the light is red, pointing out trucks after we pass them so that Owen (who still sits facing backwards) will see. It's a beautiful craziness.
Thursday of last week, I apparently left a door slightly ajar when unloading groceries. When next I entered the van on Sunday morning, the battery was dead. Fortunately, my parents were visiting [Isaac was already at church], and Dad quickly jump-started the van. Imagine our complete shock when I turned the key and the radio came on! There is no reason whatsoever that the battery and the radio should be connected, as far as I understand -- and yet, there it was, blaring static from every speaker. I was cautiously excited, knowing it probably wouldn't last, but so thrilled to get Christmas music in the car this season after all!
48 hours later, I made the executive decision to turn the radio back off -- and leave it that way.
The little boys and I were in the car for maybe an hour total over the past two days. In that time, the vast majority of that beautiful craziness boiled down basically to three sentences: "I don't like that song." "I want it louder (or softer)." "I want a different channel [station]."
Well, little boys, I want peace and contentment. As soon as the outrage over my turning the music off subsided, we were back into our normal soundtrack: Levi counting in a sing-song voice, Silas babbling quietly, Owen muttering as he drifted off to sleep. I'll take that over a working radio any day.
Unless we're on a longer trip and all of the boys are asleep, I really don't mind the lack of radio. Our trips are full of noise, most of it pleasant. Levi counts, of course, but more often, I sing whatever he requests: all the verses to "Holy, Holy, Holy," as many as I can remember of "Come, Christians, Join to Sing" and a slew of other hymns, the "state song" (Fifty Nifty United States -- he now knows about 20% of them), others. Owen chimes in with "Twinkle Widdle Star" and "Skid-a-dink-I-wuv-you." Even Silas, when he is awake, adds his voice to the mix. When we're not singing, I'm answering questions about electricity [how does the traffic light turn on?], hypothesizing about the location of the moon during the day, explaining ad nauseam why we can't keep going when the light is red, pointing out trucks after we pass them so that Owen (who still sits facing backwards) will see. It's a beautiful craziness.
Thursday of last week, I apparently left a door slightly ajar when unloading groceries. When next I entered the van on Sunday morning, the battery was dead. Fortunately, my parents were visiting [Isaac was already at church], and Dad quickly jump-started the van. Imagine our complete shock when I turned the key and the radio came on! There is no reason whatsoever that the battery and the radio should be connected, as far as I understand -- and yet, there it was, blaring static from every speaker. I was cautiously excited, knowing it probably wouldn't last, but so thrilled to get Christmas music in the car this season after all!
48 hours later, I made the executive decision to turn the radio back off -- and leave it that way.
The little boys and I were in the car for maybe an hour total over the past two days. In that time, the vast majority of that beautiful craziness boiled down basically to three sentences: "I don't like that song." "I want it louder (or softer)." "I want a different channel [station]."
Well, little boys, I want peace and contentment. As soon as the outrage over my turning the music off subsided, we were back into our normal soundtrack: Levi counting in a sing-song voice, Silas babbling quietly, Owen muttering as he drifted off to sleep. I'll take that over a working radio any day.
I love it- silence and beautiful craziness= much better than the radio :) Thanks for sharing.
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