If I could take time in a bottle

I can’t take time in a bottle, but for a few minutes on a Monday afternoon I popped a Jim Croce tape into an old 8-track tape player and took myself back to 1972.

To my shock, that old relic fired right up, which proved to be somewhat problematic for a hyper-nostalgic person like myself. Of course, I sat down and listened. Then I popped in Paul Simon, followed by Kris Kristofferson, and then the Broadway Cast of Paint Your Wagon.

Where am I going? I don’t know? When will I be there? I ain’t certain. What will I get? I ain’t equipped to say.

I did have places I was supposed to go, though, and basements I was supposed to be cleaning.

The console and bin of tapes had seemed like low hanging fruit in my efforts to thin our impressive collection of dusty memorabilia. I had wrestled it up the stairs and marched it through the family room. Then I got the urge to plug the thing in.

I texted the family as the increasingly scratchy voices that scored my youth filled the room. In their own ways, my kids were sweetly supportive as I related how my efforts to finally start getting rid of our ridiculous collection of useless things had already derailed.

“Keep!” wrote Charlie, to absolutely no one’s surprise. Charlie once happened upon his siblings clearing out a pile of action figures and dug every single broken one back out of the trash bin.

“Sounds like it sparks joy. Keep,” said Katherine, who has always been a huge proponent of contagious joy.

“Dump!” wrote Vinnie. “Think of how much room for new memories you’ll get by freeing up all that space.” I’d just been through a brutal cleaning of our cabin with Vinnie and his wife Danni, which was both exhilarating and intimidating. We got rid of a ton of junk up there, and it inspired me to want to do the same to our basement.

“Dump!” wrote Molly, also to no one’s surprise. Molly, who will mend a sweater until the yarn in it actually disintegrates, has no use for impracticality.

She had also once tried to revive the old 8-track tape player herself and had bought us some extra vintage tapes too. But it proved impossible to coax a sustainable sound out of the old wheezer.

Amused by their responses and still committed to my cause, I packed everything up and hauled it off to the half-priced book store to see if they would make me a deal. I’d read the console alone might be worth up to $300.

While the employees sorted through the tapes and console my precious memories, I busied myself in another area of the store. Hovering felt awkward.

Eventually, I heard, “Laura to the service desk,” and headed over.

“We’ll give you $15,” they said.

“For the whole thing?”

“Yes. It makes a weird noise when you play a tape in it.”

“That’s the time machine part,” I thought.

“OK,” is what I said. I wasn’t even really disappointed, though, just happy to have completed my task without adding to the landfill.

I bought myself a little ice cream on the way home to celebrate.