I have been married for almost 30 years but until I was in my 30’s, I was a happily single guy with an active social life. I was a card-carrying member of the “Girlfriend of the Week” club for years. These many girlfriends for about 20 years had a wide variety of tolerance or interest in my scanning hobby. Of course, my scanning hobby predated my dating hobby for about a decade. During the time they coincided with each other which one had the priority depended on several factors, most of which centered upon whether one would deter the other from future entanglements.
While the common perception of the scanner enthusiast is that of a fat, stinky, ugly and lonely guy living in his mom’s basement, many of the other guys I know in the hobby are anything but. I myself moved out of my parent’s home when I was 20 and got my first of several apartments. But this story isn’t about my homes. It is about the girls in my life. While the stories are true, I did change some of the names for privacy. I was surprisingly successful in my social endeavors despite of having scanners around me all the time.
When I was in high school, I had scanners in the car as well as a handheld scanner with me most of the time. I did leave the handheld in the car or at home if I was on a date unless the girl next to me had an interest in scanners. Some of my favorite girlfriends either got interested in scanners while we were dating or already involved in radio. One girl saw my scanner while I was walking thru the mall and asked me about it. She had a scanner herself and was having a hard time finding crystals. As it turned out she knew my sister and we dated for a while.
Another girl I dated around that time had no clue about scanners but did have a CB, as we all did in high school. This was the 70’s, prime time for the CB craze. Her dad asked me to help him get a scanner as he was interested in mine. That didn’t help my relationship with his daughter however, she thought it was weird that I would come to her house to talk to her dad and not her. While my girlfriend’s moms tended to like me most of their fathers did not so this was a nice change. A few other girlfriends in high school had a tertiary interest in scanners. They would show interest in scanners, real or imaginary, usually to stimulate conversation. I would play along since I thought it might increase the chance of some sort of physical contact later.
During high school we had a loose group of around a dozen or so, both guys and girls, and many of the girls I dated were in that group. We tended to sort of rotate around and my girlfriend this week would be going out with Dan or John the next, by that time I would have hooked up with Debbi or Donna or someone else in the group. Several of us had scanners, including some of the girls.
After high school, while I was on the fire department, I dated the the daughter of the fire chief. The chief was not happy to see me show up on his doorstep one night. His daughter “Nancy” worked in the office handling timekeeping, and the chief had a strict rule prohibiting his men from chasing his daughter.
Nancy carried a department pager to keep track of happenings and also had a scanner at home. We got together when she asked me to install a new scanner in her car for her. I did on the condition that she go out to dinner with me. She agreed and later admitted that she had wanted to go out with me so invented the need for the installation to get me to ask her out. The chief wasn’t happy, but we were both of age and there wasn’t much he could do about it. I was just finishing medic training so he couldn’t even ace me from that.
Being on the fire department was a huge aphrodisiac for the 18–25-year-old girls I would meet during that time. I started on the FD a few months before I graduated high school and the three of us that were on the FD in my senior year had permission to leave class and respond to calls when our pagers went off. Needless to say, we often wore our FD t-shirts and pagers to school, and we got more female attention than the football or basketball jocks. Of course, we had the worst teams in the area, so it wasn’t really a fair contest. I am pretty sure our football team won at least once my senior year, I am not so sure about the basketball team though. We did have a world-class marching band but the guys in that never got a date, not even with the girls in the band.
After high school I attended the local junior college before university and worked full-time as a police/fire dispatcher while also working as a POC firefighter. All three of these endeavors brought new social opportunities. As a young guy it was easy to maintain an active social life in addition to the rest of the stuff. Most of the girls I dated in college tolerated the scanners but for the most part had no real interest in them other than occasionally asking what they were talking about. The exceptions were mostly dispatchers from other agencies that I would come across one way or another. Working for small towns we often shared channels or talked on interop channels. This, however, is for another story.
I dated the daughter of one of my coworkers for a while, she had absolutely no interest at all in scanners and so I would leave them off while I was with her. Her dad hated me for some reason. He supposedly spoke no English at all but one time when I was talking about a scanner with some other people at their house he perked up when we heard a fire call a block or so away come over the radio. It was then I figured out he was less “old country” than he made out to be.
The girl I went out with the longest up until then was “Lana”, she and I were together for almost a year after I graduated from college. She had absolutely no interest in scanners at all but tolerated them well when she was with me. She did however enjoy going train watching with me, I have no idea why that interested her. The only time she showed any interest in scanners was when a police or fire call happened at our apartment building, of which she was the rental agent. I offered to set her up with one of my scanners in her office, but she declined, she had enough of them at my apartment.
After college I was hired by a local police department. My girlfriend while I was in the academy, “Jenni” asked me to set her up with a scanner for the town she lived in as well as the town I worked for. I got her a BC220XLT, and it was ideal for her. It was easy for her, a non-techy type, to operate as she only needed to adjust the volume, and I wrote the channel list for the half-dozen channels she listened to so she knew what was what. This one lasted 6 months, probably as long as I had been with any of the girls in my life save for “Lana”.
That BC220XLT turned out to be the go-to scanner for several girlfriends for several years. After “Jenni” and I broke up I dated several other girls, several of whom enjoyed listening to the scanner on the police frequency for my agency when I was working. Sometimes it was hard to get the scanner back when we broke up, and finally one girl took it with her when she moved to Kentucky after we broke up. While it was an expensive scanner for the time, it wasn’t worth the effort to recover.
One of the girls that had that 220 in her home while we dated got so interested in it that when we amicably broke up, she asked me to help her get a scanner for herself. She later got hired on a nearby police department and I saw her several times at calls, training or shift parties. I later introduced her to one of my coworkers and they later married, I stood up for her husband at their wedding. It is a good bet that having that scanner got her interested in police work, that is how I got into it as well.
Another girl I dated for almost a year actually got into radio in a big way. She loved having a scanner around and even joined our GMRS group so I helped her get a radio for the house and her car. “Carrie” dabbled in ham radio but couldn’t pass the test so resigned to just listening on 2M. When I called her on Autopatch (remember this is before cell phones) she knew enough not to engage in certain conversations then. “Carrie” was the one who kept my BC220 and took it with her to Kentucky after I wouldn’t give her a ring.
After that the girls tended to be less interested in my scanners and more interested in getting a ring. As I was now in my 30’s most of the girls I dated were also, a single girl of that age often hears the ticking of a certain clock and has no interest in hearing a scanner. A couple would ask what was going on now and then but for the most part it was just an annoyance for them that they put up with due to my good looks and charm and the hope of a future with me.
Eventually I met who would become my wife. She turned out to be the best wife a scanner nerd like me could hope for. With her being totally deaf I could have the scanners on all the time, as loud as I wanted, and she didn’t care. After we married, she put up with my nonsense as well as my scanners, let me buy everything I needed and most of what I wanted. Her only complaint was if the radio stuff got messy with wires all over the place. It was due to her insistence on not seeing wires that got me into rack mounting and she let me buy what I needed to do so. It was her idea for me to get that big 7-foot-tall rack cabinet I had here for several years. 30 years into our honeymoon and she still puts up with my radio nonsense and all my other crap. Boy, did I get lucky!
While the common perception of the scanner enthusiast is that of a fat, stinky, ugly and lonely guy living in his mom’s basement, many of the other guys I know in the hobby are anything but. I myself moved out of my parent’s home when I was 20 and got my first of several apartments. But this story isn’t about my homes. It is about the girls in my life. While the stories are true, I did change some of the names for privacy. I was surprisingly successful in my social endeavors despite of having scanners around me all the time.
When I was in high school, I had scanners in the car as well as a handheld scanner with me most of the time. I did leave the handheld in the car or at home if I was on a date unless the girl next to me had an interest in scanners. Some of my favorite girlfriends either got interested in scanners while we were dating or already involved in radio. One girl saw my scanner while I was walking thru the mall and asked me about it. She had a scanner herself and was having a hard time finding crystals. As it turned out she knew my sister and we dated for a while.
Another girl I dated around that time had no clue about scanners but did have a CB, as we all did in high school. This was the 70’s, prime time for the CB craze. Her dad asked me to help him get a scanner as he was interested in mine. That didn’t help my relationship with his daughter however, she thought it was weird that I would come to her house to talk to her dad and not her. While my girlfriend’s moms tended to like me most of their fathers did not so this was a nice change. A few other girlfriends in high school had a tertiary interest in scanners. They would show interest in scanners, real or imaginary, usually to stimulate conversation. I would play along since I thought it might increase the chance of some sort of physical contact later.
During high school we had a loose group of around a dozen or so, both guys and girls, and many of the girls I dated were in that group. We tended to sort of rotate around and my girlfriend this week would be going out with Dan or John the next, by that time I would have hooked up with Debbi or Donna or someone else in the group. Several of us had scanners, including some of the girls.
After high school, while I was on the fire department, I dated the the daughter of the fire chief. The chief was not happy to see me show up on his doorstep one night. His daughter “Nancy” worked in the office handling timekeeping, and the chief had a strict rule prohibiting his men from chasing his daughter.
Nancy carried a department pager to keep track of happenings and also had a scanner at home. We got together when she asked me to install a new scanner in her car for her. I did on the condition that she go out to dinner with me. She agreed and later admitted that she had wanted to go out with me so invented the need for the installation to get me to ask her out. The chief wasn’t happy, but we were both of age and there wasn’t much he could do about it. I was just finishing medic training so he couldn’t even ace me from that.
Being on the fire department was a huge aphrodisiac for the 18–25-year-old girls I would meet during that time. I started on the FD a few months before I graduated high school and the three of us that were on the FD in my senior year had permission to leave class and respond to calls when our pagers went off. Needless to say, we often wore our FD t-shirts and pagers to school, and we got more female attention than the football or basketball jocks. Of course, we had the worst teams in the area, so it wasn’t really a fair contest. I am pretty sure our football team won at least once my senior year, I am not so sure about the basketball team though. We did have a world-class marching band but the guys in that never got a date, not even with the girls in the band.
After high school I attended the local junior college before university and worked full-time as a police/fire dispatcher while also working as a POC firefighter. All three of these endeavors brought new social opportunities. As a young guy it was easy to maintain an active social life in addition to the rest of the stuff. Most of the girls I dated in college tolerated the scanners but for the most part had no real interest in them other than occasionally asking what they were talking about. The exceptions were mostly dispatchers from other agencies that I would come across one way or another. Working for small towns we often shared channels or talked on interop channels. This, however, is for another story.
I dated the daughter of one of my coworkers for a while, she had absolutely no interest at all in scanners and so I would leave them off while I was with her. Her dad hated me for some reason. He supposedly spoke no English at all but one time when I was talking about a scanner with some other people at their house he perked up when we heard a fire call a block or so away come over the radio. It was then I figured out he was less “old country” than he made out to be.
The girl I went out with the longest up until then was “Lana”, she and I were together for almost a year after I graduated from college. She had absolutely no interest in scanners at all but tolerated them well when she was with me. She did however enjoy going train watching with me, I have no idea why that interested her. The only time she showed any interest in scanners was when a police or fire call happened at our apartment building, of which she was the rental agent. I offered to set her up with one of my scanners in her office, but she declined, she had enough of them at my apartment.
After college I was hired by a local police department. My girlfriend while I was in the academy, “Jenni” asked me to set her up with a scanner for the town she lived in as well as the town I worked for. I got her a BC220XLT, and it was ideal for her. It was easy for her, a non-techy type, to operate as she only needed to adjust the volume, and I wrote the channel list for the half-dozen channels she listened to so she knew what was what. This one lasted 6 months, probably as long as I had been with any of the girls in my life save for “Lana”.
That BC220XLT turned out to be the go-to scanner for several girlfriends for several years. After “Jenni” and I broke up I dated several other girls, several of whom enjoyed listening to the scanner on the police frequency for my agency when I was working. Sometimes it was hard to get the scanner back when we broke up, and finally one girl took it with her when she moved to Kentucky after we broke up. While it was an expensive scanner for the time, it wasn’t worth the effort to recover.
One of the girls that had that 220 in her home while we dated got so interested in it that when we amicably broke up, she asked me to help her get a scanner for herself. She later got hired on a nearby police department and I saw her several times at calls, training or shift parties. I later introduced her to one of my coworkers and they later married, I stood up for her husband at their wedding. It is a good bet that having that scanner got her interested in police work, that is how I got into it as well.
Another girl I dated for almost a year actually got into radio in a big way. She loved having a scanner around and even joined our GMRS group so I helped her get a radio for the house and her car. “Carrie” dabbled in ham radio but couldn’t pass the test so resigned to just listening on 2M. When I called her on Autopatch (remember this is before cell phones) she knew enough not to engage in certain conversations then. “Carrie” was the one who kept my BC220 and took it with her to Kentucky after I wouldn’t give her a ring.
After that the girls tended to be less interested in my scanners and more interested in getting a ring. As I was now in my 30’s most of the girls I dated were also, a single girl of that age often hears the ticking of a certain clock and has no interest in hearing a scanner. A couple would ask what was going on now and then but for the most part it was just an annoyance for them that they put up with due to my good looks and charm and the hope of a future with me.
Eventually I met who would become my wife. She turned out to be the best wife a scanner nerd like me could hope for. With her being totally deaf I could have the scanners on all the time, as loud as I wanted, and she didn’t care. After we married, she put up with my nonsense as well as my scanners, let me buy everything I needed and most of what I wanted. Her only complaint was if the radio stuff got messy with wires all over the place. It was due to her insistence on not seeing wires that got me into rack mounting and she let me buy what I needed to do so. It was her idea for me to get that big 7-foot-tall rack cabinet I had here for several years. 30 years into our honeymoon and she still puts up with my radio nonsense and all my other crap. Boy, did I get lucky!
