I am sure everyone has some story of their own connected with radio. I have several.
A childhood memory:
A Sunday summer morning (Saturdays were working days then, in case anyone does not know), bright sunbeams flood a small room, crawl over my blanket, tickle my cheeks and nose. In childhood one wakes easily and all at once. Eyelashes flutter like butterflies, and you look at this sunny world with joy, waiting for new adventures and discoveries. And from the other room comes: “Good morning, good morning and have a good day!” or “Pionerskaya Zorka is on the air,” or, at worst, “Feet shoulder-width apart, back straight...” And the delightful smells of breakfast being prepared. And mother is at home. But the main image of the morning is precisely the radio, carrying the feeling of a child’s stable happiness!
The radio receiver hanging on my grandmother’s wall was large, round, and black. It inspired trust. One treated it with respect. I did not dare turn it on: I was timid.
When I was five, on a cold February day full of flu, I sat at home alone — though why alone? I was with the radio. It told me all sorts of interesting things. And then suddenly it said: “Would you, Alyona (that was what they called me then), like to take part in a museum children’s drawing competition?” I loved drawing, and how can one refuse the radio?! I drew, we sent it off, I received the main prize and the vector of my whole life. Though I have told this heroic fact of my biography so many times already.
Later, when I had grown up — even too much — I received, as punishment or trial, I do not know which, a long and stubborn insomnia. Sometimes I tried to write poems, sometimes I drew, sometimes I simply lay waiting for saving sleep, but most often I listened to the radio. And one night I heard the questions of a Russian Radio quiz, and there was some contest about our, the listeners’, attitude to or perception of that radio. Revived by the appearance of a nocturnal goal, I began inventing answers and — oh, miracle! — won a prize, perhaps even the main one: a watch with the words “Russian Radio,” which I wore for a long time and with pleasure.
I still love radio and draw only to its sounds and words.
And when the film Radio Day appeared, so thoroughly taken apart for quotations in our family, I understood: radio is everything to us!
And with enormous pleasure I congratulate you on your holiday, my dear radio!
Good luck to you, variety, honesty and good songs; we listened to you, we listen to you, and we shall go on listening!
