WEBVTT

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This is called "Radio."

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"When I was in sixth
grade, a pseudo joke

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circulated around the
playground and stayed for what

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felt to us like an eternity.

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Weeks, maybe months.

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The story was inevitably
told with minor variations

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in background information
and character development.

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And the setting
was always shifting

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slightly from the North
Pole to the South Pole.

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But the essential
situation tended

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to remain largely intact.

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A male polar bear and
a female polar bear

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live happily together on
an ice floe until, one day,

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it splits apart.

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As mama polar bear floats east,
and papa polar bear floats

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west, mama bear calls out.

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And here it was vitally
important to pronounce

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the punch line with
just the right mix

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of interrogatory confusion
and explanatory fatigue.

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Radio.

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Several of us would
watch as one of us

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told the joke to an
uninitiated classmate.

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And when the punch
line was delivered,

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we would all laugh maniacally.

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The joke, of course, was
that there was no joke.

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And the point was to
prove how compliant all us

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sixth graders were.

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The listener always followed our
lead and laughed and laughed.

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The instant he started to laugh,
we'd all fall completely silent

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and ask what's so funny.

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Well, you know, he'd say,
still holding his stomach,

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No, we'd say.

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Tell us.

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Well, you know, radio.

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Unpersuaded, we would
press him further.

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And he would retreat
to the position

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that it just sounded funny,
the two polar bears, the ice

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floe, radio.

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What's funny about
it, we'd ask again.

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And then he would have to
acknowledge that he laughed

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only because we were laughing.

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Wasn't it supposed to
be funny, he would ask.

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Sooner or later, we'd laugh at
him and explain the situation

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and call him that
most terrible name.

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Conformist.

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What we ignored
for the most part

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was the process by which we,
individually and collectively,

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had recently been introduced
to the situation ourselves.

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And speaking strictly of myself
for a moment, how comparatively

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late in the game I was
allowed to be enlightened,

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occupy as I did
with the singular

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position of indisputably
least popular person

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in the indisputably
most popular group."

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So that was that one,
which I don't know if--

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I have to speak to people after.

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It might be a
generational narrative.

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For somebody such as
myself, I was born in '56.

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I grew up in California.

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That story was
everywhere, whereas I

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gather for people of a
younger generation it's

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more kind of the interwebs.

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What's it called, catfishing?

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You know, that kind of
peer pressure manipulation

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has gone online I
gather in many ways.

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Not sure if the radio
story is alive and well.

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Apparently not.

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