Better late than never…

I’ll admit it.

I’m behind the times.

The truth is that I wouldn’t own an iPod if I hadn’t won a new nano in a drawing here at work. So, I smiled atmy good fortune and took it home. Slowly, but surely, I’m learning the ropes.

It’s only been seven years since Apple put out the first iPods.

And, judging by the CDs I’ve been dumping onto iTunes – and by extension – into my iPod, it’s been even longer since I bought a CD. Sure, I’ve bought every Better Than Ezra album produced since the late 1990s, but other than that, my music purchasing seems to have stopped around 1999.

Considering I was a recent college graduate making $18,000 a year living in a trailer park in Shelby with my future wife and a cabinet filled with ramen noodles, the fact that I was somewhat lacking in disposable income really isn’t that surprising.

What’s striking is how bad some of the CDs I did buy actually are. There are a few in my case – Tracy Chapman, Cake, Kid Rock and Bush – that have one or two songs on them I actually like.

That’s like paying $12 for a song, which makes the 99 cents that iTunes charges seem like a bargain.

My wife has an iPod knockoff MP3 player, which was bought back in some of our, ahem, bleaker financial times. She now has a full-blown case of iPod envy, magnified no doubt by the fact that I’ve hijacked her ear phones and my uncontrollable urge to spout off the number of songs on my iPod.

It’s 397 as of this morning, with plenty more CDs to go.

It’s been fun to walk down memory lane with some of the CDs I still have. The emotions range all over: happy, sad, rueful, ashamed and funky.

I guess it’s like Better Than Ezra says in “Rewind:” Right then a song … became a soundtrack for … this space and time…

The point of this diatribe is that, here lately, I’m very much in touch with how old I’m getting.

So instead of having a mid-life crisis, buying a Corvette or running off to join the Peace Corps (do people still do that?) – I think I have a better idea.

Maybe I’ll just go buy a CD. I’m thinking “Vida la Vida.” Or I guess I could add to my husband of the year resume and get the misses her own iPod.

You just never know…

Tags: iPod