A New Age of Jim...

Literally... I just turned 25, and a dramatic event that will be recorded in the annals of Jim has occured. It all started with a tape deck, and my grandmother Lois taking me to a bookstore where I purchased the very beginnings of my personal music collection. After several concerts, and several more tapes, I had my growing music collection memorized, and not just the lyrics, I even memorized the song order.

I decided at 15 that it was high time I had a cd player, and signed an agreement with Columbia House to get 12 cds for the price of 1. I did this to force myself into saving every penny and getting the cd player. I received the cds in a week or two, but had to resign myself to reading the liner notes for two months before I finally had enough to by the player that I could use to listen to them. I knew the words to every song the first time I heard them. I was amazed at the sounds that accompanied the words I knew so well. It was like I was a deaf man hearing the birds sing for the first time. I was so happy. Maybe too happy. For the next few years, I dedicated every spare penny to my music. I bought, and listened, and read, and went to concerts, and wrote to artists, and spent long hours sorting the cds into alphabetical order, and my eventual ordering of choice: Popularity. My popularity of course. Why have the albums you don't listen to anymore in the front of your collection? Just because they begin with "A"? It didn't make sense... But the really unique part of my collection was that it was always portable. My first cd player was not a boombox, it was a magnavox portable cd player with "6 second skip protection." My life as a turtle began in high school. Carrying my cds in my backpack. And not just the popular ones... all of them... because you never know when you'll bump into someone and they'll say "Wow, I haven't heard Black Eyed Sceva in years!!!" And when that happened, I was there to say "Well, gee wiz! I have them right here in my backpack!" I daydreamed of things like that happening. I dreamed of my dad one day saying "Jim, I want to hear what you love so much. Why don't you play me a few songs?" If that happened, and I didn't have them with me, I knew that the chance would most likely never happen again, and I didn't want to miss that. When I joined campus crusade in my junior year, they let me dj the Thursday night events. I had never been given such an opportunity, and I took full advantage of it. People would come back to the music room with looks on their faces. Minds opening to the idea that there was music outside of what the radio played... fantasies that I had entertained in my day dreams for so long came true. "Jim, where did you hear about this band?" "How did you hear about this band?" "Where can I find this song?" I clung to every chord, and couldn't imagine a better time to be a fan. To listen. In the late nineties, a time in which many had given up on music, I was flourishing. I was like a Beatles fan in the mid to late sixties. It was my time, and I was so happy. College came, and my turtle shell grew. I took my cds to college and got a radio show from 7-9 am. Noone listened. I didn't care. The station only broadcast to several dorms on campus, and I didn't care. I was playing music for me. If anyone else listened, I was happy to have the company, but really, I was just dating my music. I met a girl, and introduced her to my lifelong love, and she fell in love too! Not with all of it, but so much of it. She saw the effect it had on me, and maybe that's why she loved it, because she loved me. Because that love let her pause and hear some of that music in a way that it hadn't been heard before.

The turtle years didn't truly end until this week, but there was a sub-era that has existed for the last 2 or 3 years. The computer age. When Sarah and I bought a computer, the first thing I did was start importing my cds onto it. Suddenly, I could make mix cds, I could listen to any song I wanted, and the most important aspect soon took control of my musical life. Random. God bless random. I could set my music collection to play any song in my collection at random. For years, I had played my music, but now my music was playing me! Challenging me to guess the artist, the song, the year... Coming up with creative play orders I never would've dreamed of! Johnny Cash segued into Joy Electric, then to Jurassic Five... I was in heaven. Sarah had her collection filled with her discoveries, and we have had a music filled adventure these past few years.

But there was still the unfortunate fact that I would, in theory, have to leave the house, and my musical haven at some point. These dry spells were filled by making mixes and listening to them on my portable cd player. This continued until this past week when I finally obtained the answer to my portable music dreams. The iPod from Apple Computer.

I have been watching this modern wonder with longing eyes for several years, and have never had the money to get one. So this last fall, I told everyone I loved that I didn't really want anything else. All I really wanted for Christmas/Birthdays was money toward the iPod, and that it didn't matter how long it took, I was willing to save the $ required. Well, at Christmas, I got more than I expected, but not enough, and my birthday came and went with more donated to the iPod fund. I was getting closer, but still about $150 away, when Saturday night rolled around. My best friend Ryan and close friend Sean came over, so the four of us could go out to dinner and celebrate my birthday together. When they walked in, Sean was holding a giant burlap bag which weighed a great deal. Mainly because there were $75 in pennies inside. Ryan brought $74 in $2 bills, and a $1 coin. Just enough... "You're getting an iPod tonight!" While I knew it was going to happen at some point, I really wasn't prepared for how awesome this would be for me. I know that many people with more money and less love for music have purchased an iPod with no real feelings one way or another, but for me, it was so important. Jessica, Sarah's sister came along for the dinner, and was there with the rest of us when we took it up to the counter and walked away with what will change the way Sarah and I listen to music for the next few years. The iPod holds approximately 5,000 songs at capacity, and weighs less than 2 cds in their cases. No more turtle years... no more mixes burned to cd. I can now have all the convenience of my turtle shell in my pocket. My shoulders feel better already.

I am so happy, and so thankful to my family in Ohia and Illinois, to my friends and to my wife for making this dream of mine a reality. Thank you.

Jim