Radio rodeo

I was sitting on the couch this morning, on the "omg it's too early" side of 6am, when some late 80's early 90's song popped into my head. So I'm holding a squirmy little boy who's too tired to be awake and too awake to be asleep, and I start remembering how girls used to call radio stations and dedicate songs to boys. I remember being with some girls at a slumber party and they wanted to dedicate that Robin Hood song, only, they didn't want to name names, so they were sending the song out to all the cute guys at JHS. They left the from part open to the imagination. Thing is, we didn't have the station on, we were just trying to get through to the dj. When he finally answered, and the request made, the dj explained that they'd already had a dozen or so calls like this, and played the song a few times already so no we wont be playing your dedication. Since we hadn't been listening to that station, we didn't know the song had already been over played.

The point of these dedications on the radio eludes me (and frankly back then I didn't get it either). The person you want to hear the dedication has to be listening to that station at that moment, and paying enough attention to the talk between songs to hear their name and the message, which may last only seconds (thus the rodeo reference in the title). It especially makes no sense when, like the girls at the sleep over, the dedication is so anonymous that anyone listening could think, "hm, I'm cute and go to JHS, so this song must be for me!"- which of course would probably be the Highlander/Star wars/band geeks (which to be fair, is the group I loved to be associated with) and not the jocks and pretty boys it was intended for.

Who know what kids do now. There are so many stations, incl satellite stations, plus, I think teens jamming to their tunes are listening to their own play list.