I found a time capsule in an old box I recently dug out of my storage unit. It measures 3.5 inches tall, 1.5 inches wide and about a quarter of an inch thick.
When activated, it takes me back to various scenes: Of my teenage days, mowing my parents’ huge country yard; of my high school golf career, warming up on the practice green before a meet; of my college days, walking to class on the campus of IPFW or riding the bus around IU; of settling in to my first apartment in Bluffton.
The time capsule is my old MP3 player, which was manufactured in 2008 and likely last used in about 2013 or so, a guess based on some of the 595 songs that I found on it. I couldn’t find the device’s charging cord, so I had to order a replacement off of Amazon. I spent about two hours Monday night with headphones on, absorbed in the tunes being pumped out. Smiling, speculating, singing.
Curious as to what song was last played before the device died and/or was thrown in the box for storage, I had to smile when I discovered it was “I Don’t Want to Wait,” which served as the original theme song from “Dawson’s Creek.” (I have a lot of songs from movie and TV show soundtracks in my collection.)
I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now, what will it be?
Music has a way of taking listeners right back to certain moments or memories. If we like the song enough, we might remember when we first heard it. If you listen to a song multiple times, you might associate the lyrics or tunes to what you were doing when the song was played, like warm-up music or yard-mowing songs.
Music keeps time.
Some of the songs I have in my collection I forgot even existed. Multiple times on Monday I found myself thinking, “I used to love that song.” And once I recognized them, the lyrics came back to me like they were ingrained in my brain. They spilled out with zero effort.
At some point after 2013, my MP3 player was replaced by my smartphone and its ability to store and stream infinite songs with the push of a button or two. I still played CDs while driving until last fall when I realized at the time that the 2018 Honda Civic I bought doesn’t have a CD player. Although it has multiple plug-in and playback options for my phone, imagine my shock upon the discovery that CD players are no longer standard in vehicles.
I still buy full albums, although digitally, from time to time to have on my phone while driving with spotty internet connections. I love listening to music while driving, even though the bulk of my time in the car these days has a soundtrack of toddler sing-along songs. (Enter heart emoji here.)
As far as I can tell, the decade-old device still plays like new despite its obvious wear. And I probably won’t poke around much with adding or deleting songs from it; I want to keep my time capsule just as I found it to hopefully be enjoyed for years to come.
As Kenny Chesney once sang, “Every time I hear that song, I go back …”
jessica@news-banner.com
