Nostalgia Now: Celebrating CD's

Imagine this: You just got back from a hard day of playing outside. You are tired from all of the running around, but proud of what you were able to do in the hours you spent outside before hearing your mother yelling, "Come inside and get cleaned up!" After you clean up and get some lunch to eat, you go straight to the TV to find something to keep you entertained until you go to sleep. Your eyes dart to your favorite stack of CDs, and you pop one into the CD player. You sit there, excited for the same video you have watched time and time again to begin playing, but there is one issue: it keeps pausing.

You solve this issue by taking the CD out of the CD player, giving it a harsh rubdown, and popping it back in. The video starts playing with no issues, and you sit back and relax, not even fazed at the fact that you have watched this video countless times before.

Recently, I was thinking back to the media that consumed my childhood. Most of my memories contained the presence of CDs. I remember the CD player in our house, the CD player on the side of the family computer, and the CD player my parents put in our car so that my brother and I would stop fighting during long car rides. I remember how the road, my parents, and even the car we were riding in would disappear the moment we put those headphones on. It was like being transported to new worlds that were opened by our imaginations.

I remember one of my all-time favorite CDs would play the Proud Family movie, and at the end it had an interactive driving simulator.

The goal was to get Penny to pass her driving exam, and I remember my brother and I would go back and forth, fighting over who had the better chance at winning the game. It is memories like this that make me so fond of CDs. I miss screaming at my brother whenever the Disney Fast Play comes on. We both would go ballistic, as we feared that we would not press the button in time and

Instead, they would have to watch the extended previews before the actual movie. Yet, as much as we both denied it, we loved every second of the previews and were both seated with our eyes glued to the TVs. I do not only miss CDs due to the movies that play on them. I also remember the Trouble Man CD my dad would put in our CD player. He would always play it late at night, and I remember falling asleep to Gaye's soothing voice.

We all have different memories that consumed our childhoods. Some people have never seen a CD in their life and may never see one. Others had racks of CDs, sometimes CD walls. All I know is that whenever I see a CD, it brings back fond memories. I don't know what else would make me desperate to use every piece of clothing I had to wipe it down to stop the frequent pausing of what I tried to watch. This and the other aspects of the CDs that made up most of my childhood will always bring me Nostalgia Now!