Sony Walkman

Love your IPOD and the thousands of songs that it will hold?

The ugly contraption above was the closest thing we had to an IPOD when I was in High School in the early 1980′s.

Behold the Sony Walkman cassette player!

Whereas some IPOD’s hold thousands upon thousands of songs, pictures, and videos…..the Sony Walkman that I had in High School had space for one cassette. Back then, most cassettes were 45min on each side which would give you about 25 songs total if you were lucky on a 90min cassette.

I carried one of these little buggers for 26.2 miles, twice, as I ran in Marathons while I was a runner in the early 1980′s.

The thing was as big as my hand and weighed as much as about 100 IPOD’s so it was not exactly real easy to carry for 3 and a half hours of running. My solution was that I actually tied the thing to my wrist so that I could not drop it. I had family and friends that would position themselves every 5 miles or so along the course and once I reached them, they would do a quick “pit stop” on the Walkman. I would hold out my hand, someone would untie the Walkman, either flip the cassette or put a new cassette in, and then would tie me back up. We could do this little change in about 1 minute if we were lucky. Then it was back out onto the race. A few times during the race, my hand would get tired or I would lose my grip and the little bugger would fall, only to be caught by the strap connecting it to my wrist. After three and a half hours, the Walkman would feel like I was carrying a refrigerator in my hand. By the next day, my left arm would hang normally from my body while my right arm dragged the ground like a gorilla.

I used to do all my training runs while carrying the Walkman in my hand. Living in Oregon, there was often one main problem that would pop up, RAIN. Walkmans were not waterproof or rain resistant in any way. This led to me having to carry the thing in a ziplock baggie as I ran. I had to wear a winter stocking cap on my head to cover the bulky headphones that the Walkman used. It was quite a sight on warm summer days when it was raining to see this lanky idiot with the ski cap on, carrying a wet sandwich bag in his hands, go running down the highway.

Actually, thinking back on it….in Oregon in the early 1980′s….there were a lot of more freakish looking people visible out on the roads than me……(Hippie Central!)

I wish I would have kept my Walkman. The next time my son complains about needing a bigger IPOD because his IPOD will only hold 5,000 songs…..I would love to pull out that old relic, pop in a scratchy cassette tape, have him plant the ear-muff sized headphones on his head, and smile and say….”Enjoy your 1980′s IPOD son!”

Somehow, after he has to listened to the deafening squeals and screeches of the cassette as he fast-forwards through a song, I would bet that his initial reaction to the Sony Walkman would be “This Sucks!!”

Thirty years ago, I thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. Now, “it sucks!”.