Serial
3 min read

Serial

So I’ve recently started listening to the “über trendy” (to quote Sharon) podcast, Serial. It follows a self-proclaimed detective and investigator, Sarah Koenig, as she attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding the murder of a high school senior girl in 1999.

Almost my entire office listens to it, and since last week – or actually, only since Monday – I’ve almost caught up to the latest episode. I have a hard time paying attention sometimes because I don’t believe I’m an auditory learner (hahaha… so lectures in college were hard for me to pay attention to… that is my excuse. Just kidding. I was probably just not the greatest student) but it does make my commutes go by faster, and it doesn’t make me car sick because I don’t have to look at anything on a screen or any text. Yay!

In my typical wannabe-hipster sense, I’d like to say that I first learned about it when I read about it in the newspaper because I’m cool and I read the newspaper. Just kidding again, I only read the newspaper on Fridays and then only the entertainment section because that’s the section that the crossword is in.

But anyways, it’s an easy listen (like a book can be an “easy read”…) and I recommend it if you’re into that kind of thing. My favorite show on TV is Bones, which I know isn’t the greatest show, but I sort of like that sort of thing. You know, crime and mysteries, and solving the case, et cetera.

Although I enjoy listening, there are three things that come to mind that make me stop and wonder a little bit. The first, a bit morbid, is that I’m kind of afraid of the physical nature of death. Not so much how I’m going to die (hopefully of old age) – but how I would deal with the physical death of someone else. Not even emotionally, but physically. Like – it’s one thing to wish and hope that I never see someone killed in front of me, and that I never see someone’s dead body – but what if it’s my future spouse, who dies next to me in bed? Or even in a hospital? Or even when my grandparents die, and if they die at home – wouldn’t someone have to come discover them dead?! What is the proper procedure following that?

The next thing is that, while this is gaining in popularity and fans are going crazy over each new installment and Reddit threads are blowing up, do they realize this is some family’s past trauma they are treating as entertainment? I notice that they never speak to the victim’s family. Maybe because they didn’t want to be contacted, but rightfully so – this was their daughter that had been murdered, and now this 15 year old case is being relived and broadcasted across the entire nation. Is it horrible for them to witness this? It reminds me of another case, not as morbid – but the case of the horrible Barbie as a computer engineer book that also went viral, thanks to this post. The friend who owned the book, wrote another post about how she felt about this issue going viral based on what had happened in her personal life. This is the Age of Technology, woohoo.

The last is a thought I keep coming back to, something that was said in the first episode – that it’s really, really hard to remember things. I used to journal a lot, in a written journal, but not so much anymore, maybe because I find that there’s not much to write about. But not writing down anything makes each day blur and time pass so much quicker without any notice… and that scares me too. In my previous blog, I did this thing where I tried to find something special about every single day, no matter how ordinary the day was, and that was fun. Reading back on it, I’m glad I did it, even if it was hard on some days to come up with something to write about. Reading back on it, it’s also hard to believe that I was that same girl who wrote those words two years ago.

If it’s hard to remember things two years ago without the aid of my handy-dandy blog, I can only imagine how difficult it would be to remember things from 15 years ago without Facebook or Twitter or high-speed internet or text messaging.