True Confessions of a Mix-Tape Lover

Throughout my life, no gift has brought me quite the same kind of joy as a well timed mix tape. (Not including diamonds.) Knowing that my friend sat with a blank tape and record song after song with me in mind- what could be sweeter? The sound quality was usually lacking. Sometimes the very beginning of a song was missing, if they were doing it old school,recording from the radio. Of course, when those fancy two deck machines came out and you could put a tape in and record from it to a blank tape, things got much more "professional" in the mix tape world. Either way though, the combination of someone A) Giving me music, and B) Having purposefully selected songs that would be meaningful to ME was just the perfect gift!

We have a fireproof safe in the house. It contains important papers that would be a big pain to replace, such as our marriage certificate, the kids' birth certificates, and insurance documents. It also contains pictures of me from my childhood, which I can only attribute to having had our house (my parent's house)burn down twice taking with it most of our old family pictures. I definitely don't keep them for my vanity as they are not attractive. I had uncorrected teeth, and my hair ran the gamut from the "Dorothy Hamill" to the "Mullet", to the "Aquanet Overkill" styles. So, yeah, it must be the fires that keep me holding onto a few silly snapshots of my childhood. Do you know what else is in there? A mix tape. It is from my best friend from high school, Katrina. She made it for me when I went off to college (one year before her). I played it on my Walkman a lot when I missed home. It made me laugh, which made me cry sometimes. It had songs we had run onto the court to during basketball pre-game warmups, or songs that we sang at the top of our lungs in the car driving around our home town. She wrote the playlist order on the paper insert, and just seeing her handwriting made me feel less far-away. I haven't listened to that tape for a good 18 years, but I have moved it from house to house, state to state, fireproof safe to fireproof safe with me. I may never listen to it again. That really doesn't matter. Just having it enough. Just catching a glimpse of it when I rifle through that box looking for one of the kids' social security numbers is all I need for the smile.

Last week I kind of got a new mix tape. I mean, it wasn't at all a mix tape, but it was music put on a disc with me in mind. My friend Jessica and I are going to see Blake Shelton at the end of August, and she made me an "Essential Listening CD" with songs from the people opening for him, as well as ones that Blake is likely to sing at the show. It gave me that warm, fuzzy, mix-tape feeling all over again. We went to the Luke Bryan concert together, super last minute, and I felt disappointed that I hadn't properly prepared. Many of his songs caught both of us pleasantly by surprise. It was a repeated cycle of cloudy recognition. Upon the first few notes we would think it sounded familiar, and then he would get a couple lines into it and we would shout, "I love this song! I didn't know he sang this!" It was fun, but still disappointing to not be able to confidently sing every lyric. And so, with that in mind, Jessica made me a modern day mix tape. I love it because she put her time into it. I love it because it shows me how well she knows me. She gets me,and how important my pre-concert prepping is. :) She took time out of her busy life to do something nice just because it would make my day brighter.

Before she gave it to me she said, "I have something for you. It's just a tiny something-no big deal". Maybe for some people it would have been no big deal, but for a mix-tape music enthusiast like me, what could be sweeter? I better make some room in the fireproof safe.