A Mix Tape Of Goodbyes

Mark's mix-tape had a place in Sarah's heart forever, but did it have a place in her room? She liked the idea of keeping it, but how often did she listen to it? The truth is, she hadn't owned a cassette player since 2001. 

The cassette tape knew it, too. His time was up. How could something so personal and loved not be needed anymore? No-one was safe. Even the CD's were getting packed up and shoved under the bed. 

Rachel was the music guru. She was one of the first to get Napster. She said, "mp3's will kill the CD", and they did. Rachel was so crazy about the songs that she filled up ten hard-drives with music. 

But Luke doesn't even have the mp3's. He streams it on Spotify and he watches the live versions on YouTube. It's like that everywhere. There are books in libraries and CD's in the garage and DVD's in the back room and they're all wondering what the hell their future is. 

Wayne watched 'Jurassic Park' a hundred times on VHS. He didn't think he'd watch it again but he planned to keep the tape. And for years he did. He argued about it so often with Nina that they came close to divorce. But then it hit. It was a Sunday, and he realised; it's not needed any more. It's just an old giant video cassette taking up space. 

Jake, James and Marcy were the purists. They shopped for Vinyl and they roamed the streets for second hand books. But then the economy stayed nowhere and they had to move somewhere smaller. They looked at each other and they looked at the books and they looked back at each other. It was time. They loved them, they used to literally scream for joy when they found crazy-random DVD's and ancient-smelling books. But that chapter was closing, the disc was being ejected. 

Now it's a single copy of 'Catch 22' between them, the mix tape that Mary made before she died, and the Billy Wilder box set. Everything else waited by the door. Jake was okay about it. Somewhere across the world, I guess Wayne was fine too. Even Rachel and Mark had made peace with it. Everything goes away and changes into something new. They learned to accept it. 

But the books didn't. The beat-up and broken copy of 'The Great Gatsby' had been with Marcy since the beginning of time, and now it wasn't even being put into circulation, but in the trash. The videos are gone and the cassettes are gone and now the DVD's and CD's are praying for one final spin.