2012-366 Day 58 – Dear Kwon

Pull up a chair folks, it’s story time, and, while you may have heard it before, I’m practicing telling stories in the written format. Jess and I were on the way back from somewhere (San Diego, I believe) one evening and were fiddling with the radio, settling on a random pop song since that was the only station not playing commercials at the time. The song ends and the DJ starts talking, we realize after a few seconds that we had stumbled onto “Love Songs on the KOST.” For those of you who don’t know, KOST is the soft rock station in southern California and “Love Songs” is the block where they play dedications and read fawning letters from sappy people (What? No, no one’s really described me as romantic. Why do you ask? . . . Oh). Thankfully I vaguely recall it being the Ted Zigenbush(?) edition, so the breathy female voices were relegated to a minimum.

For whatever reason we didn’t dive immediately for the next station, but instead reached out slow enough that the next dedication caught our attention enough for us to pause. “Dear Kwon (or Quan, or Kwan, or something like that. I don’t know, it’s radio, I’m just guessing here),” the letter began. Now I’ll paraphrase the rest here, because the heart of the story is true even if I don’t remember the exact phrasing in detail. “I am grateful for the relationship we’ve had and the time we’ve been together. I love you and wish you the best in the year to come.” Okay, we’re doing good so far, but something about this letter feels a little off. Probably why we subconsciously decided to stay on the station. And then came the “but.”

“But I have to stay true to myself and the New Years Resolution I made and can’t get myself caught up in you again. It’s over and I can’t go back to the way it used to be.” Bam, like a Clayton Kershaw curveball this letter just dropped like a falling comet. Jess and I imagined that the screener only read the first couple lines and passed it on, and the DJ got to this point and it was too late, like the pilot screaming, “Pull up! Pull up!” And this was supposed to be a dedication, what possible song could they follow this up with? We had to know and so stuck around. After wrapping the letter and giving the usual DJ platitudes, they kicked into this song:

They somehow managed to crush the ball out of the park with their song selection, although I don’t recall if it was attached to the letter or the DJ picked it (“Almost Lover” by A Fine Frenzy if you can’t get the Youtube link). We stayed on the station for the next several songs just to see how they got out of this mess, and the progression of songs from that point was like slowly climbing out of a dark cave. I don’t remember the songs exactly, but one of them was a Taylor Swift ex-boyfriend song if that tells you anything about the trajectory they had to take to get back to positive songs. Jess and I still love telling this story, and Jess coined the phrase “the Dear Kwon letter” to refer to it (my response, “I see what you did there”). I maintain that the Kwon of this letter had one of two reactions, either the expected crying session or, I feel the probably more likely, “Who is this crazy lady talking about me on the radio?” Also, since they don’t use last names, I’ve got to think that it’s a good thing Kwon isn’t too common of a name, as not a lot of guys had to call their significant other to make sure they were still in a relationship after that epic radio split.

Unrelated, I must be getting a decent audience on the blog, as I keep having to clear our spam comments caught in the filter. Keep up the good work loyal reader(s).

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