Memorex memories

In the back of a spare-room closet somewhere, either at your house or that of your parents, you know it's there.

The mix tape (and I DO mean tape) you got from that special someone who is now your ex. Back then, oooooooh, back then, you loved that tape. You played it in your car (which possibly was a bitchin' Camaro), over and over again, preferably during long drives alone at night. You hunched over your steering wheel a bit, squinting your eyes and listening intently for meaning in the lyrics. Not just what the lyrics meant to, say, Richard Marx, but what secret, personal meaning was lurking in the lyrics that caused your special someone to include THAT song on THAT tape that he/she made just for you.

I'm not here to lament that the mix tape is dead, though I do lament that. I'm here to tell you about the confessional and deliciously cringeworthy blog Cassette From My Ex, wherein invited guests dig that tape out of the closet, divulge the playlist and attempt to glean meaning. Or, barring meaning, just to glean laughs.

In my house, in the back of a spare-room closet, I freely admit there is a mix tape from an ex. It was made probably around 1997 or so, which admittedly is pretty late vintage for a mix tape, but then again I seem to remember that CD burning software around that time, while technically available, was probably about $4 trillion or so and required having an "in" with someone at the HiFi Buys. Anyway, the tape. I remember listening to it every day during a summer that saw me commuting across metro Atlanta during both rush hours for an internship. I remember wearing it out. And I remember, to its everlasting credit and to the credit of the ex who made it, that it introduced me to a band called The Jayhawks. (The selected song was "I'd Run Away," and it was the second song on Side A.)

I'd divulge the rest of the playlist, but I can't dredge it out of my memory, and the tape itself is too entombed in the back of the spare-room closet to be, itself, dredged out. But I'd wager it's waaaaay less embarrassing than the contents of the countless millions of mix tapes I made for crushes and exes myself. I'm hoping those never show up on Cassette From My Ex. Shudder.