25/12/2023
Happy Monday from San Francisco, California
Gather round all!
Auntie Lauren is going to tell you a very touching Christmas story.
It was Christmas Day 1987 and I was on-air at KRLT in South Lake Tahoe.
I had just moved to the lake a few months before and didn’t know anyone well enough to spend Christmas with.
After pulling a couple of air shifts, I stopped at 7-11 on my way home to pick up my Christmas feast: tater tots, hot chocolate and peppermint Schnapps.
Upon getting home, I made myself the hot chocolate adding a couple of glug-glugs of schnapps to my mug and put on my favorite Christmas album “The Forester Sisters”.
I kept drinking the schnapps and played the same cut over and over and over and over: “I’ll be home for christmas.”
Being drunk, lonely and missing my family, I drunk dialed my Mom.
Sobbing “The Forester Sisters keep singing how they’ll be home for Christmas but I WILL NEVER BE HOME FOR CHHHHRRRRIIIISSSSSTMASSSS!!”
Not my finest moment but a much talked about with my Mom for decades to come.
Fast forward to a few years later.
I’m working at KOZZ in Reno.
The sister station at the time is KICK fm, a country format.
Who’s being interviewed? The FORESTER Sisters!!
I go into the booth during a break and say “I have a story about one of your songs.”
The dj says “Lauren! Tell it on air!”
I’m like “nahhhh... can’t I just tell it now?”
Forester Sisters and dj all decide I’m to tell it on-air.
So I do.
I tell about the schnapps, the playing the same cut over and over and over, then drunk dialing my Mom.
*Silence*
Not even crickets.
Finally one Forester Sister starts to laugh. Another one joins in. The dj lets loose. The whole studio is laughing.
A Forester Sister says to me “we get story’s of inspiration about our music all the time but we’ve never had a ‘drunk dialing a mom while on schnapps’ story!!!”
Fast forward again...
I’m at The Nugget. I get on an elevator and who should be on that elevator but a Forester Sister.
She looks at me and points “YOU!!!! Oh my god!! YOU!!! We were doing The Grand Ole Opry’s Christmas Special and they wanted us to sing ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas’. We kept cracking up because of YOU!!!”
Moral of this story: one person can make a difference.
Merry Christmas