The Veruca In My Head

Dear Readers:

I am currently suffering writer’s block, due to a bad case of the blah’s.  I could write here about the cause or causes of my current funk, but I  know that even to begin to do so would unleash a long-winded pitty party complete with a sea of tears, so I won’t.  Instead, I will give you the following “fluff” post. 

It seems like I’m always the last one to get the latest techonolgy.   I still have dial-up internet, and I still listen to/buy my music on CD’s.  For the past year, I’ve wanted an MP3 player.  I don’t really know why, there is no legitimate reason that I need one, but I want one nonetheless.  

  Most of my time at home is spent doing the 3 C’s, cooking, childcare or cleaning.  My family are TV junkies, so I rarely get to listen to music at home.  An MP3 player would be useless there.  Even with ear buds, I would have to increase the volume to excessive levels to be able to hear over the 2 televisions and bickering children in the house, risking my hearing, and quite possibly my children’s lives, as I wouldn’t be able to hear them in the event of an injury or emergency. 

My time in the car is spent, for the most part, alone, where I am able to control the music.  When I do have passengers that don’t like my taste in music, I have a strict rule that goes like this, “make the payment and you can control the radio”.  The rarity of transporting passengers, along with my few passenger’s inablilty take me up on the payment offer pretty much makes an MP3 player useless there too.  

In the rare event that I use my treadmill for something other than a clothes hanger, I use the DVD player to play my favorite Bon Jovi mix cd.  I’m usually the only one awake in the house, and the sound doesn’t bother anyone.   In the mornings when my mom and I walk, we talk, so I don’t need one for exercise. 

Even though, factually, I do not need an MP3 player, I want one.  When I think about it, I feel a little like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka, only instead of an oompa loompa, I want an iPod.  In my head, I picture a little girl in 70’s attire saying, in a whiny voice, “But daddy, I want an iPod now………”.  (yeah, I prefer the original Willy Wonka, I’m old school like that).

What’s worse is, I don’t just want one MP3 player, I’m convinced I need 2.  One for Bon Jovi music and one for everything else.  Through the wonder of ebay, I have tons of Bon Jovi music.  Of course, I have the regular albums, the ones you can throw in your shopping cart right by the bread and hair gel, but I also have much more than just those.  My extensive collection includes imports, rarities cover and holiday songs.  A quick internet search revealed nearly 700 different Bon Jovi songs, (699 to be exact) a few I’ve never heard of, but not most.  I own alot of them, and putting them on one MP3 player would leave little room for anything else.

When I hear something on the radio that I really like, I have the urge to go out and buy the thing just so I can download a particular song.  Sometimes it’s a new song, such as Gary Alan’s “Chasing Airplanes” (one of the writer’s is in Brad Cotter’s band) and Eric Church’s, “Sinners Like Me”, and sometimes it’s a song that takes me back to my youth.  It’s times like that when I have to remind my inner-Veruca that we don’t have that kind of money. 

For now I’ll continue making my mental list when I hear songs on the radio, or on tv that I want to download onto my future MP3 player, and try to silence the Veruca in my head.