The other day while driving in the car, my grandson asked me to play his favorite song. I told him I couldn't make the radio play his song, that we would just have to wait for it to come on.
He protested, saying that his mom plays it in their car. Well, his mom has an iPod with about 1,000 of their "favorite" songs. She takes her iPod everywhere. With the touch of her finger, she can play any song she wants, anytime, anyplace.
This got me thinking back to when I'd hang out with my friends at the beach listening to music on our transistor radios. We couldn't choose what to listen to and, in fact, anticipation was half the fun.
The DJ would lure us to stay tuned for an upcoming song. One by The Beatles or Jan and Dean or Leslie Gore or The Four Tops. Too many Golden Oldies to mention here.
We'd wait anxiously, yapping happily about the important things in life, such as boys and clothes and music and boys. We'd listen to the DJ talk about life as we knew it, and when that favorite song played, we'd lie back, close our eyes and drift into our own private thoughts.
Today, whenever I look around, it seems that everyone is plugged into her own musical device, not talking to each other at all. Not having that shared experience of waiting anxiously for a great new song.
At the gym, walking down the street, in the grocery store, in line at the post office. You can buy a song off iTunes, download it into your iPod and take it everywhere you go. That is, as long as you keep your iPod charged.
Back then, even if we wanted take our favorite song with us, we would have had to take an entire album or cassette tape. There was no way to buy just one song. Which forced us to listen to an entire album, where sometimes a real gem would be discovered.
Sometimes waiting for something can be a good thing.
It's all about patience. In this fast moving world of ours, patience is something that a lot of the younger generation doesn't understand. Everything moves so quickly.
We can send a message to Paris in one second and get an answer in two. We are constantly plugged in and wired up. Work follows us everywhere, even into the bathroom. Yes, I've been known to talk on my cell phone to a banker while... well, you get the picture.
So, I told my grandson, he would have to be patient. We'd just have to listen to the old fashioned radio and wait for his song to come on. And in the meantime, we could make up our own songs.
And you know what? We had a great time, sharing, laughing and communicating with each other.
Isn't that what life's all about?
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