We Asked Three Generations About the Same Radio. Here's What They Said.

A wooden radio has sat on the same shelf in the same house for fifty-eight years. We asked three people who grew up with it the same five questions, separately, without letting them hear each other's answers.

Q: What's your first memory of the radio?

Grandson (age 19): Honestly? I don't think I have one. It was just always there, like a lamp. I never turned it on.

Daughter (age 61): My father bringing it home in 1968, wrapped in brown paper, telling us it cost more than he wanted to admit. My mother wasn't happy about it for about a week, and then she wasn't happy about anything else either, so I guess the radio won.

Grandfather (age 89): The day I bought it, I almost didn't. I stood in the shop for twenty minutes. It was a foolish amount of money for a young father with three children. I bought it anyway. I don't regret much in my life, but I've never regretted that.

Q: What did you actually use it for?

Grandson: Nothing. I've literally never turned it on.

Daughter: Every Sunday night, my father listened to a variety program at eight o'clock. The whole house had to be quiet. Not because he demanded it — because we all wanted to hear it too, eventually.

Grandfather: News, mostly. And on Sunday, a comedy program that made my wife laugh in a way she never laughed at anything I said myself. I used to feel a small jealousy toward that radio.

Q: Does it still work?

Grandson: I have no idea.

Daughter: Last time I turned it on was maybe fifteen years ago. It worked. Sounded strange, tinny, but it worked.

Grandfather: Of course it works. I checked it last month.

Q: Would you be upset if it got thrown away?

Grandson: I mean... probably? I don't use it, but it feels wrong to say yes.

Daughter: I'd never let that happen. I don't even know why. I just wouldn't.

Grandfather: I won't be here to be upset about it. But I hope someone in this family keeps something a little useless around, on purpose, for a while longer.

Q: What do you think it actually represents?

Grandson: I don't know. Maybe I'll know when I'm older.

Daughter: My parents' whole marriage, honestly. The good years and the harder years. It was there for both.

Grandfather: A version of myself who thought spending too much money on one thing that made his family happy was worth the fear of not having enough for something else. I still think that man was right.

—

Three people, one object, three different radios living inside the same wooden box. Nobody's answer was wrong. Nobody's answer was the whole story either.