I was sitting in my home office, scrolling through a Spotify playlist titled "Ultimate 80s Workout" when Princess Amy materialized, perched on top of my printer.
She wore a blue leotard over silver tights, a pink headband, and purple leg warmers—the full Jane Fonda package.
"Research," I replied, clicking through tracks. "I'm building a playlist for my morning constitutional."
“Research?" Amy repeated, stretching the word like spandex. "You mean procrastinating, don’t you? You're simply revisiting your glory days as the Richard Simmons of Houston."
I bristle at the comparison. "I was nothing like Richard Simmons. I was a certified fitness professional, and my shorts were much more tasteful than his."
"Debatable," Amy said. "I've seen the photos. Your shorts were so short they would've been considered inappropriate in ancient Rome."
This is why I never invite Amy to share in my nostalgia. She has a habit of remembering the inconvenient facts, rather than the way my memory has carefully reconstructed them over the decades.
"What you're looking at," I explained with exaggerated patience, "is the modern equivalent of what used to take me hours—and even days to create in 1986."
Amy settled in, crossing her imaginary leg-warmer-clad legs. "Enlighten me."
"First," I began, warming to my subject, "you had to understand Beats Per Minute. You couldn't just throw a random selection of songs together. An aerobics routine needed precision—warm-up tracks at 110-120 BPM, cardio at 130-150, cool down back to 110."
"And how exactly did you calculate these BPMs? I don't recall a handy Spotify feature in the Reagan era."
"Manual counting! I'd listen to cassette tapes playing for exactly thirty seconds on my boombox and multiply the beats by two."
Amy looked skeptical. "So you're saying you'd sit in your bedroom with a stopwatch and a metronome, timing pop songs?"
"Once I had my song selections," I continued, "came the real challenge—recording them in the proper sequence.
For the benefit of my younger followers, The Great Boombox Stakeout, as I called it then, was a weekly ritual. With my dual cassette boom box on the floor in front of me, one side set to play and one set to record, I’d poise my index finger over the record button and wait for the targeted songs to begin playing.
Hoping for Amy's understanding of my obsession with the past, I tried to describe the experience. "I can still feel what it was like to record 'Physical' by Olivia Newton-John, 'Maniac' and 'What a Feeling' from Flashdance in the right order and with the closing beats of one song blending into the opening beats of the following song."
"And then there was the timing issue," I continued, beginning to get caught up in the moment. "If I needed a song to run exactly 3 minutes and 5 seconds for a specific sequence of moves, I would position my finger above the pause button and be ready to strike."
Amy mimicked depressing a cassette play button with exaggerated precision. "The lost art of manual editing. Today's kids will never know the satisfaction of physically cutting a commercial with their index finger."
I nodded, pleased that she was following along with me. "And the worst part was spending hours getting the songs you needed, and the tape would be nearly perfect, and then…”
"The dreaded tape chew!” Amy finished, making a grinding noise that's unnervingly accurate. "The boom box would suddenly develop a taste for ferric oxide, and a weekend of work would disappear into its hungry maw."
Even more manic, I began to truly enjoy sharing these ancient memories with her. Perhaps for the first time.
“But when you got it right," I said, leaning back in my chair, "when you finally had that perfect 45-minute mix with seamless transitions and perfectly timed segments..."
"The aerobics students would go wild," Amy concedes. "I'll grant you that. They'd actually cheer when they recognized the opening beats of 'Beat It.'"
"They did, Amy! I’m happy you actually get it. “The immediate feedback from class was incredible."
Amy eyed me with peculiar rose-colored eyes, as though she might be slipping into the glorified past.
"Let's not romanticize it too much,” she said. “Remember the technical disasters? Like that time your tape suddenly started playing at half-speed, making all the songs sound like Barry White with a head cold?"
I winced at the memory. "The 'Molasses Incident,’ I said.
"And remember the time your boom box batteries died mid-class, and you had to finish the routine by singing the song yourself?"
"My rendition of 'Put Me In Coach' wasn't bad," I protested.
"John Fogerty filed a cease and desist," Amy countered. I ignored the exaggeration.
"There was a certain charm to the imperfection," Amy admitted. "Like when you recorded a song off the radio and mistakenly included five seconds of DJ banter at the end of 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.'"
"Made it better," I said. "More authentic."
"More human," Amy agreed, then realized she was becoming sentimental. "Though your current playlist-making skills leave a lot to be desired. Who puts 'Karma Chameleon' next to ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine'? That's mixtape malpractice."
I looked back at the screen, where my playlist sits, every song complete from start to finish, no DJ interruptions, no tape hiss. “You know what's missing from modern playlists?" I said.
"The charming imperfections of analog technology,” Amy answered.
"The suspense," I correct her. "That moment when you'd press play on a new mixtape in front of thirty people in spandex, and you had no idea if you would finish the class with no errors."
Amy nodded. "The digital age has removed a lot of chills, but it's also removed certain thrills."
"Exactly," I say, suddenly inspired. "Maybe I should go old school for my walking routine. Dig out the old Walkman, make a proper mixtape."
Amy's eyes widen in alarm. "Please don't. You don't still have cassette tapes, do you? Tell me you don't still have cassettes."
I smile mysteriously. "I recently found several in a thrift store still in the unopened manufacturer's packaging."
"No," Amy said firmly. "Absolutely not. There's nostalgia, and then there's disturbing the ancient techno-gods. Those tapes have probably fossilized by now anyway. Playing one might open a portal to 1986, and the world isn't ready for your short shorts to make a comeback."
"Fine," I tell her. "I'll stick to Spotify. But I reserve the right to change my mind later."
"Noted," Amy said, standing and adjusting her imaginary headband. “Now, excuse me while I change this ridiculous outfit. The mental chafing from the leotard is unbearable.” She disappeared as suddenly as she arrived.
I turned back to my playlist and clicked on the first song. The opening beats of "Physical" filled the room, and for just a brief, shining moment, I saw twenty pairs of leg warmers doing the cross-leg shuffle in unison. Sometimes, the good old days really were as good as we remember them—technical difficulties, tape chew, and all.
No comments:
Post a Comment