Day 9: CD player

One day in middle school, my friend Danika and I were sitting around my room listening to the radio, and a new song called by a girl named Britney Spears came on. "This is pretty good," I said. "She sings well. Is she black?" Then, if my memory serves me correctly, Danika looked at me like I was an idiot. Britney was no Brandy or Destiny's Child. In fact, she probably shared more in common with Hanson: white, blond, and hopelessly doomed to an on-and-off career of bad pop music. "Hit Me Baby One More Time" was the first and last Britney song I ever liked, and the last time I ever tried (out loud, anyway) to determine someone's race by his or her voice. Later, Justin Bieber would teach me that gender was no given, either.

According to manufacturer information, I got this CD player at the beginning of high school, years after I first heard that Britney Spears song. At the time, CDs were still pretty new to me. I got my first CD (Temptations Greatest Hits) in eighth grade and purchased a variety of music after that. The beginning of high school was around the time where my boy band phase (BSB4Life) met my Christian music phase (Jesus! Yeah!). Cassette tapes, like VHS tapes, were still a viable form of recording, and the 3-in-one radio/cd/tape component allowed for mixed tape creations. Personally, I was never any good at making mixed tapes. I usually don't recognize a song until the first words have been sung, and by that point, it's too late to hit the record button. Who wants a mixed tape of partially-recorded songs?

When senior year of high school came around, I got my first computer and spent innumerable hours on iTunes instead. No changing cds, no fast-forwarding to the right song on the tape. I could shuffle and skip and even burn CDs with my fancy CD-R drive. When I left for college, I lent the CD player to my sister for safe keeping (actually, I gave it to her...and then took it back years later). By the end of college, I had a laptop and an iPoD to play my music wherever I wanted, cord-free.

For the past three years, the CD player has sat somewhere in my room. For a while there, I would crank up the radio while I cleaned my room and bathroom, singing along to those same B97 airwaves that graced its simple antenna years before. But then Pandora came along, and I could give Britney Spears and the Black-Eyed Peas the thumbs-down, and never have to endure another "Imma Be" or "Circus" again.

It's funny how new technology makes old technology obsolete. Eleven years ago, this was a tizight CD Radio Cassette-Corder. Now it's a bookend on a bottom shelf. Somehow, I don't think it will end up like the record players people still keep to play old vinyls. Somehow it seems to me that this silver-purple machine will never be the kind of antique people rummage for at garage sales and on reality television. For now, though, it works, and surely someone still has an old *NSync tape they're dying to play one more time.