Boomboxes

This is a picture of the boombox I had!

When I was young, boomboxes were the coolest things. Ever. I remember going over to my friend Alix's house when I was in first grade and listening to Backstreet Boys and Nsync while jumping on her bed and dancing and singing along all because she had a boombox. It was pretty serious business. We were pretty serious business. That's how cool you got to be when you had a boombox in your room.

I didn't get a boombox until the next year for Christmas. At least, I'm pretty sure it was the next year. Second grade. I walked out that Christmas morning and there it was, in all it's grey, bulky, metal and plastic electric glory. This was it: my ticket into the cool club.

Okay, so I didn't really think in terms of trying to get into some "cool club" or anything, but I did deem myself pretty awesome for now owning my very own music playing device.

Anyways.

Sitting next to the boombox (my boombox) were my very first CDs. I got the soundtrack for the movie Shrek, with cool songs like "All Star" and "I'm a Believer," and a CD of a Christian girls  group named Zoe Girls. It was awesome. The whole boring grey exterior wasn't working to well for me, though, so I decorated it with rainbow heart and peace sign stickers. On the power button, I put a yellow smiley face.

Just three years after that the world was introduced to the iPod, but I stayed loyal to my boombox. My collection of CDs continued to grow, with music from "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrects" (which got stepped on one day when left out on the ground at Grandma Sorensen's...we went to WalMart the next day and bought a new one), the "Lord of the Rings" soundtrack, and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" soundtrack (I kinda have this thing for soundtracks). At night, I would press the "sleep" button and then drift off to sleep while listening to "Pride and Prejudice" or the song "Fairy Dance" from the 2003 "Peter Pan" soundtrack.

I have since moved on from my cool boombox and CD days and now buy everything I listen to with a click on Amazon or iTunes and then upload it to my iPod. I think, though, that there will always be a special place in my heart for big music-playing hunks of plastic. They are, after all, the ultimate ticket into the thirteen-years-ago second grader's cool club.