TEN  DIE !  HUH?

When my son, Chris was 9 years old, he liked to visit his friend Greg  in Pennsylvania, where they played a game named what  sounded to me like "Ten Die."

Rolling their eyes, they corrected this old guy's ignorance by saying the game was " 'tend I."  As a tired old dud, it took me a little time to learn how the phrase was used, for example:

A sissified child might say: "Let us pretend that I am able to fly."

A "regular kid" might say: " 'tend I can fly."

Oh! Pretend!  Kids had imaginations back then!

When I was around 7 years old, my favorite radio show was "Let's Pretend." Every Saturday at 11 am, I would enter my Aunt Marjory's pink bedroom, lie down on her pink covered bed and stare at her pink little radio, as I listened to Tony Randall and other "Let's Pretend" characters tell stories that caused exciting pictures to roll around in my brain. 

Radio fed kids' imaginations!

Himan Brown (1911 - 1910) was a famous creator, producer and director of many of the famous radio shows, such as Dick Tracy, Inner Sanctum, The Thin Man, Grand Central Station and the CBS Radio Mystery Theater.  ( I know,  most of these shows probably aired before you were born.)

Himan loved radio!

In 1993, he made a speech about radio that I would like to quote. 

"Of all the forms of theater, radio drama commands the most effective stage.  No medium -- not theater, not film, not television -- has more sheer space in  which to achieve the basic goal of drama, of telling a story.

... radio plays itself out in boundless space ... the listener's mind ... YOUR mind. 

...  a radio show has listeners, a television show has viewers. Listening is an activity. Viewing is an event. Today's discoverers of radio, when they can find it, are discovering they can be there on the deck with Captain Ahab, riding bareback behind Heathcliff on the moor, begging for more with Oliver Twist, disappearing down the hole with Alice.  

Name me, if you can, a little boy or girl who has not begged, over and over, 'Tell me a story.'  Not tell me a story in stereo or in color, 'just tell me a story!'"

Mr. Brown would have loved podcasts.

(By the way, WAMU radio plays "Old Time Radio" each week for 4 hours.)

................................................................

dit dah  dit dah dit

("That's all she wrote," in radio's Morse Code.)