Do You Remember the Time

For approximately 15 years of my life, I was a huge fan of making mixed tapes/CDs.  LOVED. THEM.  With a passion.  What I love now is rediscovering these old gems and listening to them.  Some have titles.  Some are just blank.  I really love finding untitled ones.  The anticipation of wondering what will be on the compilation, how it'll start, and then trying to remember what will come after that first song is just so fun for me. 
Back in the day (read: junior high, high school, college, and my first year or two post-college), I was the queen of mixed tapes, which eventually transitioned into mixed CDs.  I have no idea what started this love, but you better believe that once I got my first real stereo in 7^th grade, I was all about making mixed tapes. Source music came from tapes and CDs I already owned and sometimes also from the radio.  I listened to the radio in the morning while I got ready for school and at night when I did my homework.  I was such a little music freak. 

When I got to high school, I had to get ready for school at school in the locker room because I had drill team/dance line practice in the mornings.  We always had a radio of some sort going and it was usually the seniors that were in control of what was played.  Sometime during my junior year, I was given the honor of being in charge and obviously I just stayed in charge during my senior year.  I made mixed tapes for the locker room, for my friends, and obviously for my car.  The tapes for the car were absolutely a requirement because you better believe that my maroon-ish brown, 2-door, ’82 Century Buick did NOT have a CD player.  Actually it originally only came with a radio but my sister installed a CD player when she had the car, which she then gave to her then-boyfriend in exchange for a tape player from his Jeep.  Yeah, I was pissed.  Thanks for the love, sis.  Anyway, tapes were a necessity for those times when the radio just would not cut it. 

College came and with it, an Exploder with a 6-disc CD changer (go hard or go home, right?) AND a roommate with a CD burner (so novel at the time) and a dorm room with high-speed internet access to Napster.  (Yes, this was before you had to pay for Napster and all the lawsuits that were so rampant in 2000.)  Oh, the good ol’ days.  The immediate access to Napster and CD burners meant mixed CDs were created for myself, Sarah, and pretty much everyone we knew.  You better believe that my freshman year roommate (one of the many Sarahs in my life!) and I thought we were SA CUL because we had a CD burner!!  Funny to think that's a standard part of any computer now.

Anyway, I'm the nerd who still has (almost) every CD I've ever purchased or burned for myself, although I rarely listen to CDs anymore. But recently, I decided to flip through 3 of my smaller CD cases to see what was in them. I'm loving re-discovering albums I'd forgotten about and also trying to remember what was going on in my life when I burned each CD. For some of them, I can immediately recall the year, my mood, and specific events going on in my life, and I'll know what other songs will follow the first few on the CD. Others are a surprise and I'll have to wait and see what I filled the disc with. 

Don't get me wrong- I do love my ipod and most of the songs and albums I'm rediscovering are actually on my ipod, but I have so many songs on it that never come up in the shuffle mode that I'd forgotten they were there.  Plus, there's something about a mixed tape/CD that I still just love that a playlist on my ipod just doesn't quit recreate for me. 

Enough on this.  I'm off to bed.  But hopefully this inspires you random readers to go dig up an old mixed tape/CD and see what story it tells you!