What Doesn’t Belong?

Remember on Sesame Street they had this segment (probably still, sadly I’ve had no reason to watch Sesame Street since the early seventies, so I can only guess) that went “one of these things is not like the other, one of these things doesn’t belong” and then they’d show 3 blue socks and a red sock. Or for a harder one: an apple, an orange, grapes and a German Shepard.

Doesn’t the SAT have questions like that, too? Which one of these things doesn’t go in the sequence: equilateral, obtuse, isosceles, scalene or Nile, Amazon, Yangtze, Rhine?

“What doesn’t belong” is barely related to my point today, which is that people will say absolutely anything on the radio.

One of my stations does a bit during my drive home where a person will call in with an issue, say: toilet seat up or down? Then other people call in with their stories of dealing with the same issue.

Yesterday, a woman called who had hooked up with this guy who had come to her house and cleaned her carpet (In this context, not a euphemism. He actually shampooed the carpet.) but he was 10 years younger and she wanted to know what experiences women had with dating younger men. Or younger men dating older women.

So this woman phones in and starts to tell about how when she was 21, her dad, then 48 was dating a 19 year old. This is a red sock. It has nothing to do with anything.

Other radio caller goofballs: people who call in with long drawn out stories with all their personal business and lying brother-in-law and klepto Aunt who ran off with Grandma’s china and their bladder surgery complications and the tail they have growing out of the base of their spine. And callers that get all excited telling a long, detailed story that goes nowhere and has zero payoff whatsoever.

Back to the lady with her carpet cleaner – when the radio people played back the listener comments, one guy said, “If he’s a good kisser and she doesn’t outclass him, I think she should give him a chance.” The woman said that was him. He’d heard the show and called in. I think she should give him a chance, too.

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