I bought my five-year-old a tablet this past Christmas or, rather, Santa bought it for her. Or made it. Or had his elven slave labour force make it. Whatever you choose to believe in… I’m not here to judge you…
Point being, because this was a gift from Santa, it was unwrapped under the tree in all of its rubberized, toddler-proofed, hot pink glory. Her eyes grew wide upon seeing it – “for me???” – and as I sat there watching her hold it, just holding it, not believing it was actually hers, I had one of those sepia-toned memories I get all too often push itself to the forefront of my brain…
I’m nine and I’m rushing downstairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought us. It is our first Christmas in this new house and my first Christmas where I have taken up the belief that Santa does not exist, but still keeping up the pretense for the benefit of my younger sister.
Santa always wrapped presents in our house. He always had his own special paper that was different from every other paper under the tree. His presents were always the best wrapped as well, with wrapping that resembled my father’s style…
So when I see it there, front and centre, unwrapped save for a bow on the top (my mother loved bows, often using them to cover for her own poor wrapping job) I am taken aback. It’s just… there. Sitting out. No tag, no note, no wrapping.
The Barbie camper van sitting next to it, also unwrapped (save for that bow), is clearly not meant for me, so by process of elimination, I am looking at my gift from Santa.
A Sony CFS-W301 Stereo with AM/FM Radio, dual cassette recording and the most advanced technology I had ever seen in all my nine Christmases: Hi-Speed Dubbing.
I run to it. If I’m being honest and not giving a damn about highlighting my masculinity, I probably squeal a little. I hold it. I can’t believe it is mine.
My parents shuffle into the basement and…
… a tear came to my eye as I looked at her and saw how happy she was holding her gift from Santa, her very own tablet. Her eyes were small when she finally looked up at me, pushed closed by her cheeks and the size of her grin.
The holidays have now come and gone but that brief flashback to my own Christmas morning magical moment has stuck with me for the past few weeks. To this day – and not including any saccharine, sentimental schmap such as the birth of my child or my good health – that dual cassette recorder, with Hi-Speed Dubbing, just may be the best gift I’ve ever been given in my entire life.
I spent hours with it. Making mix tapes. Making copies of those mix tapes for friends and family. In Hi-Speed. Recording songs off the radio and adding them to my mix tapes.
I had owned stereos and cassette recorders before and had made mix tapes from songs taped off the radio prior to this, but this machine brought my tape mixing to a whole new level. When you are dealing with a single cassette, you have to be perfect in your attempts at taping the radio. The margin for error is very slim. How many mix-tapes in the eighties had songs that ended with the DJ coming on, or a commercial for a car dealership or, worse, cut too short, the result of an itchy finger jumping the gun on the stop button trying to anticipate the end of the song.
The beauty of the dual cassette recorder is that you can have the one cassette just continue taping from the radio without needing to worry about when to stop it. You then had a copy of the whole broadcast to edit as you needed over to a second cassette, making your song endings and transitions on your tapes that much smoother.
I remember getting out of bed – long after I was supposed to be asleep, while my parents were downstairs watching TV – and setting my stereo up on my desk.
I’d get the volume to just that right level – that perfect mix of loud enough to record but not too loud to alert my parents to what I was doing – and I would quietly sort through my stack of cassettes looking for a blank one to pop in.
After hitting the REC button on the stereo I’d scramble back into bed, putting my pillow at the foot of the bed so I could hear the radio better.
My eyes would close and I would lay there, falling asleep as my Sony CFS-W301 dual cassette recorder with Hi-Speed Dubbing would simply work its magic and quietly, perfectly, tape the night.