Missing my MP3 Player

There are a million radio stations here in central Florida, more or less. Well, maybe a little less (or fewer, as LMK-i-A would say). The problem is that I do not like any of them. I spend car trips jabbing the "change station" button. Steve suffers in silence through all of this, and Michael demands that I stop jabbing whenever the dial lands at what he calls a "guitar song".

We don't listen to the music station at home, because it plays nothing but garbage. The ads for Subway and Pizza Hut are punctuated by the latest breathy trash from sensitive men who sit on icebergs in the snow, take off all their clothes and dive into the frigid water. You know the guy I mean. No, I am not going to look up his name. I've spent way too much time talking about him already.

So we don't listen to the music station at all. iTunes is our friend. There are very few things you can't find on there, although Michael W. Smith's early stuff is a notable exception, much to my displeasure. (Don't bother judging me: I've already come clean on that one.)

The point is, I never have to listen to anything I don't like. If I'm tired of the Dixie Chicks, I just flip over to Annie Lennox. That's not possible in our rented car. We are entirely at the whim of the disc jockeys, and I don't like it. What did people do before iTunes? Did we really buy tapes and listen to them all the way through?