I carpool with another family for school pickup and dropoff.  I usually have the morning shift. I pick up three boys, ages 11, 13, and 14, friends of my sons’. The oldest kid sits in the passenger seat next to me, away from his younger siblings in the back seat but not totally out of range of stray feet and arms.  He has an MP3 player that he listens to during the ride.  He is polite enough to answer my questions, especially since I began development of my podcast.

“What do you listen to besides music?”

“Comedy.”

“If you don’t have an iPod, can you still download from iTunes?”

“Yes.”

These are not long conversations, but he is friendly enough.

Last week, I thought I would raise the excitement level in the car for a Monday morning. My podcast, Live Action Coaching, had just been posted on iTunes. I announced to the carload of kids:

“Hey, guess what? You can download me at iTunes!” 

The kids in the back were trying to figure out if I had said anything meaningful. My companion in the front seat slowly turned his head toward me, and uttered one word, “You?” 

I wish I could have gotten his face on camera.  It was as if I said I was going to be a stand in for Janet Jackson on her next concert tour.

“Yeah, me. You can download me. I do these coaching demonstrations and people can listen to me coaching.”

At this point, I was grinning ear to ear. He could tell I wasn’t joking, that this was something I was quite proud of.   

“Cool.”

That’s the real reason I podcast. I can tell 14-year old boys that I’m on iTunes and they believe me.