DUer niyad asked me to make this an OP. Why my background makes me despise trump.

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96. Thank you, cp - glad you enjoyed it!

I did, too, frankly. It started me thinking back to that "me" of those days. And it's been really cool seeing so many of my DU faves here on this thread! Sure love the feedback!

And ironically, I actually DID get the chance to be a rock jock at my then-dream station, the ABC FM powerhouse KLOS. They hired me for weekends, to do the news every other hour all day. That was the station where they had the guy with the morning news and another guy with the afternoon news, Monday through Friday, and piped in the ABC network news breaks on Saturday and Sunday, til they decided to drop the ABC news breaks and hire a live person who could also fill infor the two full-time guys all week. And because they were both male, they thought it'd be a good idea to bring a woman in. Maybe give some new kid a break but certainly also a good way to "check the box"! So that's how I got my first really big high-profile break.

So I'd carried forward for months doing the weekend news until there was a staff shuffle and one of the weekend jocks got promoted to the "big" job anchoring morning drive. He had been busy polishing his persona and was SO pleasant and engaging to listen to and he was a terrific choice. His weekend duties included a live Sunday night/Monday morning public affairs talk show. Midnight to 2am. Then the weekday-afternoon news guy, Marshall Phillips, would come in to take 2am to 6am, when the Monday morning show took over. But Marshall lived WAAAAAAAAAY out on the far end of the "Inland Empire" and it took him two hours to drive into the station. And sometimes he wouldn't make it. Like the first night I ever tried it out, myself. I'd gone into the PD's office to ask if I could do the two-hour Sunday night/Monday morning show. And he said, "sure!" And then I remember all the blood draining from my face - OMG WHAT THE FUCKIN' FUCK DID YOU JUST DO??? SHIT YOU'VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE!!!! GOOD GRIEF, YOU'RE NOT READY FOR THIS!!!!! (are you?). It felt like one of those always-look-before-you-leap things. But the weekend came and I prepared to go back on at the midnight hour, and I'd done some preparation during the week, so I had some subjects to talk about. I'd chosen some opening theme music and had one of my weekend jock friends voice an intro. And oddly enough, everything worked! Including me! And the phones rang and listeners were calling in to join the discussion, and it was BEYOND COOL! It was suddenly so easy and so comfortable to settle into that I hardly notice the time whizzing by.

Til Marshall called the booth and told the engineer to tell me he wasn't gonna make it into work that night, so I had no one to relieve me when my midnight-to-2am shift was over. I had to stay, and wing it. And astonishingly enough, I did! And people kept calling and the phones stayed lively and I had answers for whatever anybody asked me about, til after 4am when things tapered off. We took a break and I asked my engineer what usually happens by now. She said they usually just play music til the morning crew comes in. So we did! But nobody ever explained the music format to me, so I just played some of my favorites, and my engineer's favorites. In whatever order I wanted. And so for about an hour-and-a-half I actually achieved my original early college radio dream - to be a rock deejay. And on THAT station that I'd longed to work for, for years.

And the morning crew started arriving when we were expecting them to, and I signed off and stepped aside about 5:30am, and gathered up all my stuff and headed to the parking lot to drive home. HIGHER THAN A KITE! And having not smoked a thing (which did go on there). I wasn't able to doze off for hours! I felt like I'd been shot out of a cannon and was still airborne. And nobody said anything for the rest of the week while I came in to prepare for the next show except to ask what I had planned. Evidently I'd gotten away with free-form jocking at that tightly formatted rocker for a very brief time WAAAAAAAAY late Sunday night (or early Monday morning, whichever you prefer). And nobody said a word about it. Nobody ever said a word about it, other than that they liked the talk show I did. How 'bout that.