I'm breathing, but it's become a chore.

The annual playlist runs plunges me back into the depths of my own history. The 1972 playlist, for example, made me think of the early-to-mid 1980s, which makes sense if you think of it.

I wasn't really listening to rock music when I was three. Get it?

However, as my wife has pointed out in her blog, we listen to a lot of Radio Disney. It is what the kids ask for, in the car at least, and we are nothing if not generous and flexible. But it does speak to our parenting style, and the benefits we receive from it.

First of all, I am only too happy to have Radio Disney on, not because if what it is, but what it is not. I would like to listen to the news, but my children do not need to hear reports on preliminary hearings on the Aurora, CO movie theater shooting.

I would like to listen to music, and though other stations play a wider variety of songs (though not much wider) the DJs on Radio Disney will never talk about RTA bus drivers slapping the shit out of mouthy whores, or the preliminary hearings on the Aurora, CO movie theater shooting.

My kids are not sheltered from the world. The opposite, in fact. The boy is seven, and has read more about the Navy Seals who assassinated Osama bin Laden than I have. These are books in his school, written for children. I have seen them, and I will not keep them from him just because they may upset me to know his is reading about violence. Better to get it from a book than from some twit like Rover.

Amusingly, when the girl first got into Radio Disney (2010) every song I heard was performed by a teenager. Lots of white, Canadian boys who rap, and girls whose name I recognized as stars from the Disney Channel. I assumed every single track they played was produced by a Disney/ABC subsidiary.

Even more shocking was when I resumed listening to the FM commercial pop stations, which I realized I had been entirely avoiding since the early 2000s. They were playing the exact same songs. Disney Is Top 40 Radio. Amazing. But I guess there isn't really anything surprising about that.

Temperature: 39°
Climate: safe as before
Distance: 3.25 miles

There is absolutely nothing comparable to arriving home after a run to find my wife, daughter and son, sitting in the living room, quietly reading.

1992 Playlist
Kiss That Frog - Peter Gabriel
Too Funky - George Michael
Happiness In Slavery - Nine Inch Nails
Constant Craving - k.d. lang
Seen The Doctor - Michael Penn
Something Good - Utah Saints
Steam [Oh, Oh, Let Off Steam mix dub] - Peter Gabriel


"This sounds horrible." (Thanks, Stephani.)