My New Toy

I was pleasantly surprised over the weekend by an unexpected gift: an MP3 player. Yay! Fun! Now I can listen to music when there’s nothing good on TV at the gym.

Okay. Before you get all OhMyGod I Can’t Believe You Didn’t Already Have One! on me let me assure you that I was not walking around embarrassing myself with a Discman. Or an even more archaic Walkman. Although I understand Sony is using that name again with MP3 players, I mean the brick-size cassette player radio that came with a belt clip, which is the Walkman I remember. Can you even imagine what my students would do if they ever saw one? But I remember well, back when I used to run in Boston, holding mine in my hand (because it didn’t attach well to spandex), cranking my Pat Benatar tape to pick up the pace. ([begin head bobs here] “People walking ‘round all lost and confused, trying to get their lives out of the gutter!...” [guitar riffs here])

It took me a couple of tries to figure out what I was doing, how to get music from my CDs to my computer to my fuchsia MP3 player. I still don’t know if I was ripping or burning or downloading or some combination of the three but I’m pretty much a pro at it now. (Why can’t it just be downloading? Or is it uploading?) (And why can I still feel like such a technological moron?) So far I have downloaded some U2, some Peter Gabriel, some Genesis, some Led Zeppelin (Zep!), some Stylistics, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes (with Teddy Pendergrass), and a few odd singles. When I decided to step away from my laptop and get some other things done (like eat dinner) I took a few minutes to listen to something on my new toy. I put my on head phones—I mean ear buds—and danced around to Modern English’s Melt with You. Seriously danced. I have a lot of music to go but am so excited! Like a kid on Christmas. Only I’m 44.

I think, in my effort to find peace and quiet, and block out the noise, and take time to meditate and do my daily affirmations, I don’t often listen to music anymore. Especially in the car. But, if you can tell by my play list, I love all kinds of music. So maybe before upgrading my cell phone to one with a QWERTY keyboard so that I can text more easily I’ll get a little speaker set instead to plug in my MP3 at home so I can listen to more music again, to dance around the house and find joy in music as I do in silence.

I mean to rock on with my bad, MP3 player self.