Things I Learned About Myself (or perhaps re-learned) After Buying an iPod

Full disclosure: It’s not really an iPod. It’s an mp3 player by another brand (Insignia) that basically does everything that iPod does, butat afraction of the cost, and minus the Rob-Bell-ian sleek, mod design features that make Apple products the product of choice for most people my age and under.

So yeah, I just got an mp3 player and spent half the day today (Saturday) downloading my music onto it. That process involved collecting all of our cd’s from floorboards of cars, boxes in the basement, and various plastic, flippy-page carrying cases, and then listening to and then burning my favorite songs onto the new unit. The phrase kid-in-candy-store comes to mind. This was fun. I learned that:

1. I stopped being relevant, musically, in about 1998, or the year I graduated from college, or two years after I got married. I realized that most of the music I was burning onto the ‘pod was made between the years 1991-1998.
2. I really love the song Stay by Lisa Loeb. I know all of the words by heart and can sing it flawlessly on command at anytime, despite probably only listening to it once a year nowadays. And those glasses…ahh…those glasses. I probably wanted to marry Lisa Loeb back in the early nineties, but just didn’t realize it then because I was too busy pegging my jeans and trying to bench press Buicks. Lisa wouldn’t have gone for me anyway.
3. I own the album Ten by Pearl Jam, but have no recollection of ever buying it or listening to it very often. This is an album that I think just magically appears in the collection of all white guys in their early thirties. It’s sort of the rock equivalent of the Betty Crocker cookbook for women.
4. I own two Smashing Pumpkins albumsand hate both of them.
5. If I had to listen to one song for the rest of my life it might be Anna Begins by The Counting Crows. I love this song because it reminds me of both my wife and, weirdly, my hometown…as does that entire album, August and Everything After which I listened to about a million times during the course of my freshman year in college when I was pretty much too shy to come out of my dorm room.
6. I liked…cringe…Alanis Morisette…and kind of still do.
7. I liked…cringe…Rage Against the Machine…and really don’t anymore.
8. My mp3 player now contains a song from Warrant’s Cherry Pie…
9. …as well as a couple of Kevin DeYoung sermons.

So what are the readers of Ted Wins. listening to these days?