The sheer amount of musical equipment I've been through over the years makes me wonder where it all went. I had cheap boomboxes that had a radio and played tapes. After high school, I got my first apartment and bought a mini component stereo from a friend of a friend. I had NO idea what all the components or buttons were for. I only knew how to use the radio, tape deck and record player. I didn't even know how to hook it all up. My brother probably did it for me.

I don't know how he knew how to do it but ever since I could remember, my brother was always taking stuff apart, especially anything electronic. Once he was electrocuted by a tv and was thrown across his bedroom. Luckily it was just a nasty shock and wasn't anything more serious. I remember he had a CB radio. I have no idea where he got it from but I remember talking to truckers on it. My brother was the 10-4 kid and me, being such a cat lover, named myself the pussycat base. Unbeknownst to be at the time that that was so inappropriate for a 12 year old girl LOL. It was fun though and the truckers were harmless.

Years later, I had a Walkman that played tapes. I remember lugging around this silver brick of a thing but I was just happy to be out walking around with my music in my hand. It was the first time I could actually take my music with me. Doesn't seem like such a big deal now but back then that was huge! Then I graduated to CD's and had a Discman. The only problem with it was you had to hold it away from your body because it would skip if it bounced as you walked. Those were the days before I got my first car and I would walk or take public transit everywhere.

When I was twenty-seven I bought my first car. This would have been about 1992 but it was a '73 Plymouth Duster and only had a very old radio in it where you could push the buttons for radio stations or spin the knob to scan for them. I didn't have it for long because it had electrical problems and you couldn't shut it off to get gas or else it wouldn't start again. Then I had a '76 Olds Cutlass Supreme, the car that we had during our newspaper/concert going/Woodstock era, the car that got totalled and probably saved my life when I had my accident, the car that everyone made fun of but affectionately known as “The Tank”. Then there was an '80 Cadillac Eldorado with computer problems, an '83 Chevette with the duct tape on the driver's side window so it wouldn't fall into the doorframe, a '92 Dodge Shadow that was stolen, recovered and written off because of cigarette burns in the seats, a '96 Saturn that was totalled by a deer and now I have an '03 Pontiac Grand Prix GT.

I mentioned my vehicles because the only one that came with a stereo that plays CD's is my current one. At one time I had a portable CD player that had one part that looked like a tape that would go in the stereo and an electrical plug that went into the cigarette lighter. Then in another car I had a stereo installed that you could pull out the whole thing and just have a fake plate on the front so no one would break in to steal it. This meant I had to take it out and put it back in every time I got home and went back out.

Needless to say, I no longer have those previous cars or any of those gadgets. Some of them went with the cars, some of the portable ones went somewhere I can't recall. I'm pretty sure I don't have them anymore but they could be packed away in a box somewhere. I just didn't feel right about parting with them by throwing them in the garbage.