Walk, Man, Walk On
Thirty years ago next Christmas or so, my sister managed to get her grasping hooks on a Sony Walkman, courtesy of Father Christmas (known in these modern times as Non-Specified, Irreligious, Entirely Commercial Holiday Figure). NSIECHF had received word that the immature zygote considered it the ultimate in desiderata.
It was the hottest thing since Betamax (O Avid Fan children, ask your Avid Fan parents what Betamax was). It was going to be bigger than the laser disc player (O Avid Fan children, ask your Avid Fan parents what a laser disc player was), while being smaller than a boombox (O Avid Fan children, ask your Avid Fan parents what a boombox was).
To celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Walkman, the BBC convinced a thirteen-year-old to use one for a week. His perceptions are astoundingly deep and sagacious, for such a young man, sprinkled with amusing generational misunderstandings:
From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets. It comes with a handy belt clip screwed on to the back, yet the weight of the unit is enough to haul down a low-slung pair of combats.What the young man fails to understand, of course, is that pockets in trousers of the day were nonfunctional, as the pants they were sewn to were so tight as to prohibit the insertion of anything thicker than a quarter for bus fare (O Avid Fan children, ask your Avid Fan parents what a quarter was, and when it could have last been used for bus fare). That same tightness guaranteed that they could not be pulled down by a three-pound Walkman, or in many cases by a 230-pound centre-forward (That, O Avid Fans young and old, is the real reason for the rise in teen pregnancies--Pants you can remove in a Volkswagen).
However, the BBC seems to have locked on to one of the few thirteen-year-olds who can't cope with technology:
It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made.Read about the rest of them here.
Labels: Angst, Celebration, Creative Aquisitions Dept., Disturbing, Funny, General, Google, Life and its funny little ways, literary, Memory, Psychology, Random, Wallowing
posted by Metro @ 9:39 am
3 Comments:
What ever would they do with an 8-track?
Silver-- Heh. That's exactly what I was gonna say. There are certain songs that pop up on the radio occasionally, particularly old Led Zep, Yes, and CSNY where I EXPECT to hear a Ca-CHUNK in the middle of a song as the track shifts.
"...Mountains come out of the sky and they Ca-CHUNK."
@silverstar:
I'm not sure--Possibly try to open it to get the CD out?
"Wow--Look at the size of this thing! Must be a double album."
@Bunk:
Damn--Major flashback. But my first eight-track was Woody Guthrie.
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