I didn’t understand at the time how I ended up in charge of the radio project. People just started obeying what I said to do.
I was 15 years old. The National Junior Honor Society at Walker High School had an annual fundraiser with WARF radio in Jasper, Ala. For one Saturday of each year — some slow day when few other ads were sold anyway — we were allowed to sell as many ads as we could and then come to the station to perform them.
As far as I recall, the fundraiser had never been a big deal before. There was no planning that went into it. We were told one Friday morning that we could sell ads that day — during class time — and then write the ad copy. It seemed like a cool way to get out of classes for the day.
We met in a classroom underneath the school library. It was chaos at first. Naturally, most kids wanted to leave school and sell ads instead of staying behind to write ad copy. There were a few ads already sold which needed to be written, so I sat down with a few other people to start writing.
Nobody was in charge, but before I knew it, I was in charge. For years, I’ve pondered the lessons of that weekend — how it came to be that people followed me.
Nobody has the right to a position in your life which you don’t want
Intellectual honesty mostly dead — but few partisans even care
Accepting joy tomorrow does no good if tomorrow never comes
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone