Endless Loop

 My older brother kicked the door open for me when it came to making mix tapes. He put Bohemian Rhapsody right before Maynard Ferguson screeching Pagliacci. What followed after that was a mix of music, some of which I was familiar with some of it not, that would become the soundtrack for an entire summer. A few years later, he constructed another epic mix that served as my high school pep band's singalong tape: Ballad of the Green Berets, The Fish Cheer, Redneck Mother, and many many more. We wore that bad boy out. 

And in those acts of brotherly love, a seed was planted. When I got my first cassette deck, plugged it into my component system, I didn't use it to listen to pre-recorded tapes. I went out and bought a case of the preferred stock of Maxell UD-XLII ninety minute cassettes to start my own cottage industry. My car stereo would blast out collections of my favorite tunes, without commercials. The hits just kept comin'. 

When I started courting my high school girlfriend, she became the target of these operas I was too lazy to write. At the moment that the new music in my vinyl library became sufficient, I sat down in front of the stereo and pieced together another hour and a half of what was happening in my head. They became documents of the songs of that time, and the silly bits that I could squeeze into ninety minutes. 

Years passed, and eventually the romance dissipated. But the music kept coming. When she moved away I would still pack up a padded envelope now and again to keep the rock rolling. Somewhere in there cassettes gave way to CDs. And my attention turned to making tapes for the purpose of courting the girl who would become my wife. 

Time was kind to us all. We remained friends, and even though cassette tapes stopped being the currency of our relationships, those tapes hung around. Without any means for playback, there was still this mass of plastic full and overflowing with the sounds of adolescence. My wife had occasion to drop by my former girlfriend's home and she loaded up the empty spaces of her carryon with some of those nuggets from the past. She brought them home and here they sit, on my desk. 

I spent what I thought was a pittance for a machine that could turn those cassettes into music that my computer could play. So I could hear them one more time. On repeat.