Dial T for Telephone

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One of my sons will G-d willing turn 10 over Shavuot. I don't know where the time has flown, I just know that it has.

He was born in a downtown hospital on an early-morning Wednesday, and although we were supposed to bring him home Friday around noon, there were reasons to keep him in the hospital and put him in the neonatal intensive care unit. Imagine, bli ayin harah, a 9 1/2 lb. baby boy in among teeny tiny preemies who looked like little dolls; my son looked like a two-month old! I even came down at one point in his stay in that department to find that my little strong man had pulled out his IV from his hand. (mind you, he did the same thing 2 1/2 years later when he had an IV-type contraption in his hand for taking blood samples, gave it to the nurse and insisted we leave.)

Thank G-d, after having to stay over Shabbat in the hospital after all, but with my husband able to stay with me, we were able to bring our clean-bill-of-health firstborn home on the Sunday -- Father's Day.

I remember sitting in the back seat of the car, our precious cargo in the infant car seat beside me. I kept looking down at him, and then out at the world beyond the car window. It was a glorious, hot sunny day, and I remember seeing everything with a new perspective; it was as if I'd been reborn and had missed out on the most mundane things for the past several days as I was in the hospital.

We came home -- not as a couple, but as a family.

Now, I don't really know why I took you down Memory Lane of June 1995, but I think it's got something to do with the idea of changes/progress/maturity, so I could lead into this much-shorter tale.

This a.m. I was driving that son to school for early morning davening, and we were listening to the radio deejay. He had a caller on, who was hesitant in answering a question. The deejay said, "You just wanted to be on the air, didn't you?"

At that point, I had a flashback of a girlfriend and I continually calling radio stations when we were young teenagers, hoping the phone would ring, get picked up and our song request would be aired for all of Toronto to hear (or at least everyone who had their A.M. radio set at that moment to that particular station and was listening). So I started to tell my son, "When we were young, my friend and I would dial a radio station to--"

"What's 'dial'"? my bechor asked.

Oh, the times, they are a-changin'....