Yesterday, I was sleepily putting coffee on the stove, listening to my favorite radio station. I like loud music in the morning, a tradition that began at a coffee stand at Fudan University, in Shanghai, that served Nescafe mixed with hot milk and tapioca pearls. The two girls that ran the stand blasted Mandarin power pop. They both had long hair, bangs that covered their eyes, and wore T-shirt dresses featuring lots of ruffles and/or doleful rabbits. Their coffee was wildly inconsistent – you might get two heaps of Nescafe or barely one – but I liked walking there in a daze, letting the candied smell of bubble tea flavors wash over me and Jay Chou’s power ballad choruses briefly jerk me awake before Mandarin class put me to sleep again.
In Berlin, minus the two girls, I make my own espresso and listen to Flux FM, which is heavy on indie music and the occasional nineties hit. Every morning at ten they play an insufferable listener call-in game. Basically, the DJs reveal a category and a letter of the alphabet and listeners call or write in with things that belong in that category, beginning with the chosen letter. Recent categories have included: “Things you have to worry about when you’re old, beginning with ‘R’; and the strangely specific category: “Sentences that contain the phrase “in the mushrooms,” beginning with the letter ‘I.’”
I usually change the station when the game comes on, but yesterday’s question, announced in the DJ’s chirpy, this-is-my-eighth-cup-of-coffee voice, caught my attention: “The United States is heading towards bankruptcy again. Here at FLUX FM, we’re planning an Airlift. Today’s category is: things that should be flown over to the US in candy bombers, beginning with ‘O.’”
There was a hint of glee in the DJ’s voice that wasn’t just the caffeine. It was the delicious irony of the United States in need of rescue, brought low by none other than… Uncle Sam himself. But was the US going up in flames really appropriate fodder for a radio game, the equivalent of a “Knock, Knock joke”? Wasn’t there a word for that, for joy at someone else’s misfortune, that English borrowed from German? Oh right, Schadenfreude.
On the other hand, what was the big deal? I loved watching Stephen Colbert make fun of America’s idiocies, so why not grant the same lenience to a couple of sleep-deprived radio hosts? I kept the radio on through the commercial break to hear what the callers would come up with. “Oreos,” was one. (Lame.) “Openness for change. The Tea Party is cold coffee!” (Overly earnest.) “Ostblockschlampen” Eastern Block prostitutes (Bizarre.) “Ordentliches Benehmen.” Decent behavior (Smug.) “Obamacare.” (Hey, that caller sounded like Barack!)
Ultimately, I can’t get too worked up over the game because I can’t get too worked up over the debt crisis. It’s something I know I should care deeply about, as an American, but as someone who’s spent half of her life overseas, I have to constantly remind myself to check in on what’s happening stateside and to form an opinion. It’s not an instinct. To my shame, my allegiances are limited, floating, and often involve a lot of mumbling.
In Shanghai, I ended up buying Jay Chou’s album and could hum along to the songs by the time I left. But I only understood snatches of the lyrics. Yesterday, I could have twisted the radio knob to NPR to find out what was happening in Washington. I could have written FLUX FM an indignant email. But I did neither. I turned up the next song that came on the radio, and sang along to the chorus, the only part I knew by heart.