John Mellencamp "Paper in Fire"

One ordinary Sunday morning in 1996, a boy named Blake phoned into the radio station where I was working. He made one simple request: "Will you make me a paper airplane?" Since my prankster friend Pat had a bizarre college friend named Blake, I assumed it was the two of them teaming up to interrupt my Sunday morning. Not wanting to be rude, I played along with "Blake" and assured him that I would gladly make and throw a paper airplane his way. He then quickly rattled off his mailing address and hung up the phone. Later that week, I cornered Pat and asked him if he knew anything about "the paper airplane kid", and he pleaded ignorance. A few weeks later, I walked into the on-air studio and heard the DJ talking on the phone with Blake. "Wait a minute," I thought. Blake is a real person?!? Sure enough, Blake was a regular caller who asked anyone who answered the phone for a paper airplane.

Fast forward about seven years and, again, I walk into the on-air studio and begin chatting with the DJ. He pauses mid-sentence and picks up the request line where a now grown-up version of Blake asks for a paper airplane. Blake no longer sounds like a child, as his voice is now deeper like that of Barry White. I asked the DJ if Blake has ever called before and he rolls his eyes and says, "All. The Time.". I then learn than Blake's family moved to one of the Carolinas, but he still kept up his phone calls requests for paper airplanes. 

The Alan Parsons Project "Don't Answer Me"

While working the weekend overnight shift during the winter of 2000, a woman named Jeanne used to call every night right around 2:30am (coincidentally the time when bars called last call). All of Jeanne's phone calls started innocently enough: she would request a song from Rod Stewart and tell me "he's sexy". Jeanne's voice when she said the word "sexy" was my first clue that something wasn't right with her. From there, Jeanne's conversation turned sexual. She would describe her underwear, the mirror on her ceiling, and even how wonderful her "female parts" looked. From the sound of Jeanne's voice, I would guess she survived on a steady diet of whiskey, scrap metal and broken glass. Being that I worked another job Monday through Friday on top of working at the radio station each weekend, I was usually running on caffeine and fumes at this point. A conversation with Jeanne was frightening for a 22 year-old bumpkin from Indiana (me), but also a source of entertainment since the radio station didn't have internet access or a TV...all we had was soft rock and lots of it. The request line provided my overnight shift with five streams of entertainment from over-served folks who dialed up the radio station. Throughout our many conversations, Jeanne gave me her Discover Card number to buy cologne (she called it her "Discovery Card"), invited me to sing karaoke, introduced her sister Millie (who lived downstairs) to the conversation, and also invited me over for Thanksgiving that year (I didn't go -- but later found out she also invited another jock as well. That tramp!) . I often wonder what happened to Jeanne and certainly hope that she finally got someone to enjoy that mirror on her ceiling...