Rewind

A few days ago Eler Beth was watching a rerun of Everybody Hates Chris, an episode where Chris was MC'ing a school dance and borrowed a James Brown album from his mom. Anyway, I was in the kitchen, halfway hearing what was going on in the show, when Eler Beth called from the living room, "How did you rewind records, anyway??"

I had to laugh. Then I told her you didn't rewind them. You picked up the arm of the record player and put the needle back down at the beginning of the song you wanted to play.

She came to the kitchen wide-eyed. "Needle?!?"

"Yes, there's a little needle that you put on the record. It sits in the grooves of the album and that's what plays the music."

"Really!"

"And if you want to go back and play a song again, you just raise the arm and move the needle back to the beginning of the song."

She still had that "okay-if-you-say-so" look on her face. Then something else occurred to her. "How would you know where a song begins or ends."

"Well, there are, like, sections, on the album, where you can clearly see a beginning and an end."

A few years ago Thomas had bought me a phonograph that has a CD player, cassette player, and radio with it. I use it mostly for the radio or CD player these days. For quite a while Eler Beth had enjoyed listening to my old record albums, but she was pretty young and I hadn't let her actually handle them or the arm of the record player. And I guess she'd forgotten anything she'd learning about albums at that time. So I showed her an album and I demonstrated how the arm worked.

"And you could set it to immediately go back to the beginning of the album when it finished, so you could hear the whole thing over again. You could also stack several albums together and it would drop one at a time to be played."

"Cool!"

Made me wonder what her own future kids would have that would make all the current new-fangled gadgets she takes for granted every day seem wonderful to them.

I can remember an old RCA Victrola Dad had that played long cylinder "records" and that had a crank. I can still remember some of the recordings we would listen to, and I thought that was the neatest thing. I have no idea what ever happened to it.

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Thomas had taken the day off today so he could get ready for tomorrow. So we were running errands most of the day or getting things ready for the first day of gun season tomorrow. I didn't sleep well last night, so I was SO sleepy and tired all day. Andrew very kindly invited Eler Beth to tag along with him today and they spent most of the morning at Perkfections Cafe downtown.

We all met up at the T-Mobile store, though, because Thomas was buying a new phone, and Andrew needed to send his back and get it replaced (thank goodness we had got insurance for it, because it wasn't a cheap one!), so Eler Beth started looking at phones to see what kind she would like. She never actually "asked" for one, she just told us which one she'd like if she got one. Thomas is actually talking about going ahead and getting her one this year, so at least now we know which one she likes.

I had to upgrade mine a couple months ago, so I guess it's the year for new phones all around.

Okay, so I guess I'm off here for now. Be back after I have a nice, long rest (I hope!).