I didn’t realize what a sentimental person I can be until I went home for a Christmas vacation and my mom dragged out some of my old things from my childhood and teen years. She pulled out boxes and boxes of my stuff, and I was most pleased when she pulled out my old records. They were very dusty. She told me that I needed to learn how to clean vinyl records if I planned on playing any of them again. She said that, if you don’t do that, you can end up scratching them and making them unplayable. She also had my old record player and I wanted to hear some of the old music that I listened to, so I planned to take all of my albums home with me.

Today’s kids have no idea just how fun it used to be to go to a record store to buy new albums or cassettes. However, today’s kids do have the good luck of being able to buy music more easily thanks to computer and Internet. Back in my day, you had to take a trip to the mall in order to go to a store filled with albums in bins. Each of them were filed alphabetically, and I would race to the bins that would hold records made by my favorite artists. Sometimes, the store would have a big display in the middle of the store that would allow you to listen to some select songs from different records so that you could make sure you liked what you heard before you made any purchases.

I’ve purchased music in the last five years, and it was really nice to be able to pick and choose which songs I wanted to hear from each artist. It used to be that the artists chose what to put on each album that you got. If you were lucky, you would like around 2 or 3 of the songs. Then you were stuck with all of the other songs that you did not like. Today, that problem is gone.