Advent Calendar 2018: Day 11

Advent Calendar – Day 11

SONY WM-F73: FM/AM Stereo Cassette Player (1987)

Some time ago, circa 1988, I was gifted my first pair of SONY WM (Walkman). This yellow beauty right here in the picture above. I’m pretty sure my Mother picked it up at Boston Sound

which was located on Tremont Street, about ten blocks north of my High School, Don Bosco Tech.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my Mother was quite a savvy shopper. I’d be surprised if she hadn’t got them on sale.

What was particularly interesting about this Christmas Gift, was that it was not something I asked for.

Some of the ladies at my Mother’s work were getting them for their kids, so she went out on a limb and grabbed them for me.

I’m glad she did. I had never had portable music to that point. It was a wonderful gift, which I never knew I wanted, but soon couldn’t be parted from.

When I think of how easy it is to access entertainment content these days by simply downloading it to a device, I wax nostalgic for a chunky device run by non-rechargeable batteries, that you had to insert the magnetic content into directly in order to play music.

There was no cloud, you had to keep a series of “tapes” in your pockets, if you wanted to hear particular albums.

I’m pretty sure I had Genesis, Hall &Oates, Def Leppard, and Phil Collins on rotation.

This was but a sampling of the soundtrack of my life. I plugged in, and walked back and forth from my home on Medford Street, to my corner “gang” on a Pearl Street.

I don’t think I ever told my Mother how much I appreciated that freedom and sensibility.

It was a turbulent time of learning to leave childhood, and forge ahead into youngmandom.

Ya done good, Ma. Ya done good.

Whenever I wear headphones these days, I often think of my first pair of WM. A truly great Christmas Gift, which I never knew I wanted, but I truly loved.I think of that, and of my Mother shuffling back and forth from the admissions office to the Emergency Ward at MGH. While wearing her own headphones and jamming to Lionel Richie’s “Can’t Slow Down”. She’d travel her own turbulent times over those years, but that is for another blog’s consideration.

A happy Christmas memory resides in a song every time I hear it…

“Everybody sing, everybody dance
Lose yourself in wild romance, we going to
Parti’, karamu’, fiesta, forever
Come on and sing along
We’re going to parti’, karamu’, fiesta, forever
Come on and sing along