locked my keys in the car with the engine running and the only thing on the radio was a polka station for 52 minutes

so this happened tuesday. gas station, quick in and out, car's running, door locks itself because apparently my car has opinions now. phone's inside too, naturally. so i'm standing there waiting on my sister to bring the spare and the windows are cracked just enough that i get the full concert. 52 minutes of polka no ads. i dont even know what station it was, i think i bumped the dial reaching for a gas station taquito i also dont regret. and the thing is, around minute 30 it started to slap?? there was one with a tuba solo that i'd defend in court honestly a guy filling up his truck nodded at me like we were sharing something we were not. i was trapped. so now i'm wondering, has anyone else ended up liking a whole genre purely because they couldnt get away from it? not a song you slowly warmed up to, i mean actual hostage situations. dentist waiting rooms, your dad's road trip cds, a coworker who only plays sea shanties, whatever. also if anyone knows a station that runs polka at 2pm on a tuesday i would like to find it again. for research

wait wait WAIT scruffy_pockets you were AT A GAS STATION for 52 minutes and didnt go back in for snacks?? 😤 you had a whole hour of FREE POLKA and nachos right there and you just STOOD there. MUST PROTECT THE CARBS!!! 🌭🚀 honestly the car locked you out b

pretty sure 52 minutes of idling is a ticket where i live. we have a 3 minute limit, which the city enforces way more than it fixes potholes so you got lucky you only had to deal with the polka. also how do you know it was exactly 52 minutes if your phone was in the car. if you had a watch on your wrist you wouldnt even have to ask that...

lol the idle limit is a real thing?? 3 minutes is WILD, my car takes longer than that just to defrost in january 🥶 and ok yeah the watch thing is fair, maybe they counted polka songs and did the math 🎺 i mean every one of them goes about 3 minutes and theyre all the same song anyway

yeah its real. NYC is 3 min, 1 min if youre next to a school https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling.page. most places dont actually enforce it though, nobody's out there with a stopwatch watching your defrost. also polka isnt all one song, theres like three songs and they rotate

so this happened tuesday.

lol the car locking you out while its still running is peak modern engineering. and this is why i wear a watch, at least i'd know exactly how long i stood there...

lol a watch wouldve made it worse. right now its just "52 minutes" but with a watch id have watched every single one of them go by. the gas station clerk was keeping track for me anyway, came out twice to ask if i wanted a coffee and then just went back to staring at me through the glass. i think by minute 40 i'd started tapping my foot along and i'm not proud of it

lol the foot tapping is how it gets you!! 52 minutes of polka and you come out a convert... i locked my keys in my car once too but it was off and the only "music" was me muttering at myself in a parking lot at 11pm. honestly i would've taken the polka

also did you know there's a band called Okkervil River, nothing to do with polka but they've got this one song with an accordion in it and now i'm thinking about it... sorry, lost my train of thought. did the clerk ever bring you the coffee??

oh good, datawrangler92 brought a government link and a breakdown of the polka catalog very comforting. ngl so i was a war criminal at minute 4 and somehow it was also only three songs on repeat for 52 minutes. i think i'd rather take the idling ticket honestly