31 Days, 31 Memories - Day 10
Ooh, a long one today. Ask me what I did at work this morning.
10. Elementary School
At the tender age of 10, having read 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth and being earnest activists on behalf of our planet's future, our group of friends staffed a table at a town environmental fair helping people make soda bottle terrariums. It was a pretty happenin' afternoon, hot and sunny and noisy, complete with stage performances (we did a rap number - a story for another time) and a radio station DJ broadcasting live. I was playing with a terrarium and nodding along to a Phil Collins song blasting from the radio booth, familiar from my mom's CD collection, when Mrs. K., my friend's mother and our chaperone for the afternoon, came over and asked me who was singing. I told her. Next thing I knew the DJ, whom I hadn't seen standing there, was congratulating me on answering the trivia question and handing me a cassette tape. Apparently he'd spent most of the song working his way through the crowd and no-one had gotten it right yet. When she'd heard the question, Mrs. K. had told him I'd probably know.
The tape was "Welcome to Wherever You Are" by INXS. The front featured a slightly blurry pyramid of what looked like Boy Scouts in blue uniforms. I'd never heard of INXS; brought up in a house of adult contemporary, '60s folk and feel-good '50s hits, the mysterious genres of rock and alternative belonged to my classmates. I think I was disappointed to have been given this as a prize, but when I got home that day I popped the tape into my Walkman and went outside to plant the tree I'd brought home. Nothing happened when I hit the play button; the batteries were dead. Back inside, different pair of batteries. Back outside, the opening few notes of the first track came on -- a Middle Eastern-sounding reed instrument, trickling-glittery bells and bongo drums -- and even though the batteries died again right there, slowing the music down before it had a chance to get going, I was sold.
The tape hardly left the player after that. Because I heard the opening song, "Questions," around the time I first saw the two-part Star Trek:TNG episode "Chain of Command" (where Cardassians lure, kidnap and torture Picard), I always weirdly associate its narrator with Gul Madred, singing an interrogation as he dances on tiptoes around the handcuffed Captain hanging from the ceiling. The tape also came with me on our family's cross-country trip that summer, the soundtrack to Trek paperbacks and the dusty scenery I saw out the window of our rented motorhome when my parents scolded me for reading instead of soaking in the sights.
Two years ago my sister found "Welcome to Wherever You Are" on CD for cheap as we grazed the back racks of an Albany music store. She asked if I wanted to get it to replace my aging cassette. I considered it but declined; without the worn and torn booklet, memories and sentiments attached to the physical cassette, the fondly familiar need to wait while fast-forwarding through certain songs to get to the best ones, the staticky quality of the parts I've played most, the crisp new CD would have felt clinical and empty.
10. Elementary School
At the tender age of 10, having read 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth and being earnest activists on behalf of our planet's future, our group of friends staffed a table at a town environmental fair helping people make soda bottle terrariums. It was a pretty happenin' afternoon, hot and sunny and noisy, complete with stage performances (we did a rap number - a story for another time) and a radio station DJ broadcasting live. I was playing with a terrarium and nodding along to a Phil Collins song blasting from the radio booth, familiar from my mom's CD collection, when Mrs. K., my friend's mother and our chaperone for the afternoon, came over and asked me who was singing. I told her. Next thing I knew the DJ, whom I hadn't seen standing there, was congratulating me on answering the trivia question and handing me a cassette tape. Apparently he'd spent most of the song working his way through the crowd and no-one had gotten it right yet. When she'd heard the question, Mrs. K. had told him I'd probably know.
The tape was "Welcome to Wherever You Are" by INXS. The front featured a slightly blurry pyramid of what looked like Boy Scouts in blue uniforms. I'd never heard of INXS; brought up in a house of adult contemporary, '60s folk and feel-good '50s hits, the mysterious genres of rock and alternative belonged to my classmates. I think I was disappointed to have been given this as a prize, but when I got home that day I popped the tape into my Walkman and went outside to plant the tree I'd brought home. Nothing happened when I hit the play button; the batteries were dead. Back inside, different pair of batteries. Back outside, the opening few notes of the first track came on -- a Middle Eastern-sounding reed instrument, trickling-glittery bells and bongo drums -- and even though the batteries died again right there, slowing the music down before it had a chance to get going, I was sold.
The tape hardly left the player after that. Because I heard the opening song, "Questions," around the time I first saw the two-part Star Trek:TNG episode "Chain of Command" (where Cardassians lure, kidnap and torture Picard), I always weirdly associate its narrator with Gul Madred, singing an interrogation as he dances on tiptoes around the handcuffed Captain hanging from the ceiling. The tape also came with me on our family's cross-country trip that summer, the soundtrack to Trek paperbacks and the dusty scenery I saw out the window of our rented motorhome when my parents scolded me for reading instead of soaking in the sights.
Two years ago my sister found "Welcome to Wherever You Are" on CD for cheap as we grazed the back racks of an Albany music store. She asked if I wanted to get it to replace my aging cassette. I considered it but declined; without the worn and torn booklet, memories and sentiments attached to the physical cassette, the fondly familiar need to wait while fast-forwarding through certain songs to get to the best ones, the staticky quality of the parts I've played most, the crisp new CD would have felt clinical and empty.