Ah, the good old days of burning a new mix to share. Does anybody do that anymore?
It’s that time of the year when the sun shows its ugly early-morning head. That glaring, blinding, just-over-the-horizon, early-day sun that paralyzes you some mornings as you make that crack-of-dawn commute in the car to or from wherever. For me, that “wherever” is on my way home from dropping my son off at school. It seems to me my primary east-west path, Hill Road, has a direct link to the wattage-charged sun right now.
That’s a long way of explaining that I’ve been using the car’s sun-visors lately. Something I rarely do.
And in re-familiarizing myself with those visors, I’ve rediscovered the nifty CD holder I purchased from some cool online store a few years ago. You know, the black, nylon cloth contraption that attaches to the visor, allowing you to store your collection of CDs in an easy-to-reach manner?
I forgot we had it.
And apparently my kids have forgotten as well. Their car-based music enjoyment is now provided solely though their phones. These days they prefer to listen to music while sitting in their designated passenger seats with tiny earplugs in place, hence removing them from all of life’s distractions (that would be me). Occasionally they’ll throw me a bone and plug in to the car’s speakers, cable up, and push the “AUX” button until they get bored with sharing their musical offerings with me.
It all makes me sad because I miss the days of CDs.
I miss kids burning their own discs and getting excited to share their newest “mix” with me and their friends. I miss listening to the children in the carpool ask one of my kids to burn a copy of the CD for them. I miss seeing the names and titles the kids wrote directly on the disc with a marker. I miss how my daughter would usually add a little drawing of a flower to her CDs. I miss marveling how those markers somehow didn’t ruin the CD’s ability to produce sound. I miss the decision-making process of which five CDs we’d put on our multi-disc (so cool) CD player.
I miss it all. And I especially miss the little kids that wrapped themselves in and out of all of those memories.
♦◊♦
This morning, I decided to treat myself to a trip down memory lane. I was alone in my car, on my way home from the morning school drop off. I looked through the collection of CDs and picked one that my daughter had labeled “Spring Mix.” It sounded so perfect. Like a garden of lilies and tulips budding in the morning dew.
So I pushed it into the mouth of the car’s CD player.
And then began the clicking noise I had long forgotten. The CD was jammed. The same jam we used to experience two years ago. No music. Just an error message. (click)(click)(click).
Maybe this new-found technology isn’t so bad after all.
—Photo crimsong19/Flickr