My father is a radio lover, a DXer, and sometimes nearly contemplated a ham license. So I grew up with him listening to shortwave and other bands, he explained all the concepts, WWV would be on for two hours at a time (you could literally count every minute). Another fixture was the police/fire scanner that would be on most evenings, especially when we heard sirens. Dad put up a nice rotary Yagi VHF/UHF tower for the television set, so we would play with the rotary control to dial in better reception, whatever channel we watched.

So then I found channel 70-83 on the TV, and discovered that AMPS cell phone conversations would drift in and out on those channels if I just let them sit for long enough. So Dad strictly enjoined me not to reveal what I learned from those conversations. And I lost interest, because not much interesting was being said, and the broadcasts were partial, probably because the typical use of AMPS was for car phones, not people walking by on the sidewalk.