I adore National Public Radio. I delight in its programs. I can listen for hours and I save up my domestic duties for when my favorites are on the air. Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk, The Thomas Jefferson Hour, The Splendid Table, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me…I could write my whole 500 words for this column in the titles of NPR shows I love.

I am so passionate about This American Life that I have asked my husband Ted only to talk to me during the hour it plays if someone is in danger. Oftentimes, I will sit in the car in the garage when I return home so that I can hear the rest of a story or news item. I cannot risk rushing into the house and turning the radio on as I might miss a gem in those 30 seconds.

I have learned a ton from NPR and I have been entertained enormously. This week I learned a big lesson thanks to NPR—although not in the usual way. I was not even listening to the radio.

This lesson came as I worked a volunteer shift at my local public radio station. I had offered to cover the afternoon shift during the Spring fund drive. So three men, one in his sixties, one in his forties, and one in his twenties, and I gathered around a table with phones and pledge forms at hand. During the on-air pitch when listeners were asked to call in, donate, and become members of the station, we kept busy answering phones. Then it would quiet down for 15 or 20 minutes until the next on-air pleas were made.

Extravert. Chatterbox. People person. Perhaps even busybody. These are apt descriptions of my personality. And on that afternoon at the radio station, I was sitting with three introverts. So I, of course, felt obligated to keep the conversation flowing.

I told the group of a recent mishap, the totaling of our Saab. My husband Ted was driving through an intersection and a woman ran a red light, hit the passenger side of the Saab, and scrunched it. When I saw the car a couple of hours later, I was amazed that Ted’s injuries consisted of only a couple of bruises. The Saab had done what it was supposed to have done and it kept Ted safe despite the extreme damage to the car.

But what a hassle. And Ted and I had just had a conversation over the weekend about, while it was a good time to buy a car, it would be nice to go another two or three years without a car payment. Turns out we meant two or three days! I whined about it for a while.

And I kept talking to my audience of three and asking them questions about themselves. And in the course of the afternoon I gleaned much about my co-workers.

The man in his sixties talked of his dog. He mentioned how much that companionship meant to him now that his wife had passed.

The man in his forties, upon learning that I had attended law school, asked me questions about bankruptcy. He had had a bad motorcycle accident a couple of years earlier and the medical bills were doing him in financially. His house was in foreclosure and his credit card debt was gargantuan.

I asked the man in his twenties if he had ever worked the pledge drive before. No, he informed me, he had not. He said he was only there that week for the public service hours he needed for his drunken driving offense. The whole ordeal had cost him so much cash that he had ended up quitting school, moved back in with his father, and basically had nothing. Did I mention he was in a wheel chair? He assured me that it was not connected to his drunken driving offense.

Wow, losing a car was put into perspective. Ted is fine and all that is missing is a thing. Life is wonderful!