Reply to Light Housework Tape Recorder Story

The Chameleon

#KingGamma
I had one of those old-fashioned cassette recorders when I was a kid. My uncle bought it for my grandma but then she lost interest so I recorded things on it. I wish I had some of the tapes. But the value is in not having them. If you have them they're really not so great. It's like when you lose the pictures on your computer. It seems like a great loss and then you find some of them that you backed up and they're really nothing.

But one time this guy came to the house selling magazines. I lived in the country so this was an event. So he was travelling with some shady company that would drop off people in different neighborhoods and they wuold walk around and try to sell magazine subscriptions and then a car would come and pick them up and take them to another neighborhood.
I had my tape recorder so I interviewed him. I was about 10 I think. And he said he was trying to be a country singer so I had him sing on the tape. He sang some Hank Williams songs, "Your Cheating Heart," and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." I had never heard Hank Williams but I really liked the songs and he sang in that whiny way Hank Williams did. "Whiny" isn't the right word. That' more descriptive of Robert Smith, but I don't know the word. Anyway, I went and got a Hank Williams' Greatest Hits record. But I would like to have that tape. I thought he was a really good singer and he did it with no music just sitting at the kitchen table so maybe he did get to be a singer later.
 
That tape recorder was like a gun. Holding the microphone to my boyfriend's mouth was setting what he said in stone to me, so I could get a really good look at it. He accused me of being a nazi for it, and said I would splice the tape to incriminate him. The effect that it had, ultimately, was that he toned it down to the point that what he was saying sounded almost reasonable. The 'gun', became an instrument I'd somehow sing into while riding my bike.
 
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