Obsolescence

Today, Tom and I sorted through the family room closet in an attempt to further organize our lives. He started going through a big box of cassette tapes, and we realized we should throw out most of them. We don't even have a tape deck in our stereo system, though we do have three boom boxes we could use. But when was the last time we wanted to listen to music and pulled out a tape? I can't remember.

The tapes mostly brought back memories of college--that seems to be when I did the most taping. The albums I had taped from my friends made me think of those people; Kaela, Karen, and Tom seemed to have had the most influence on my musical tastes. Some cassettes were interesting artifacts: I made the "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" mix tape to get over a miserable breakup my sophomore year, and a "Happy Happy Joy Joy" mix tape to cheer myself up. Tom made me an upbeat compilation to drive to once when I came to visit him in Lancaster over Christmas break, and he made me another after we first said we loved each other.

Ben puttered around opening and closing the cases. He'll probably never use such cumbersome media; in all likelihood all his music will be digital. It made me sad that over the course of the dozen or so years of my adult life, technology has changed so much. I pictured myself in my eighties, bewildered by whatever is new 50 years from now. Or maybe I'll be able to keep up, and I'll use the new technology to reminisce about my primitive blogging days.

Photo by FortDrastic.com on flickr.com.