LET ME TELL YOU A STORY. The year is 2007. Two years ago, my parents traded in their perfecly good GMC Jimmy for a minivan with third-row seating and a VCR. They bought the minivan for its space and various features, and at first I liked it fine (I was quite fond of the ability to use headphones in the middle row to listen to CDs while everyone else listened to the radio, and the VCR kept my kid sibling entertained on long rides so I didn't have to). However, by the time our story takes place, the aforementioned features have begun showing their age. The VCR's sound is often unreliable. The automatic door hasn't been properly automatic in months. And, as we are about to find out, the CD player is breaking.
My mom has just bought a CD online: 4 Non Blondes' seminal work, "the one with what's up on it."
this fucker.
She bought the cd because she liked that one song, which, y'know, is why people bought cds back in the day. And so, one day, as we begin a long-ish drive to somewhere or another, she pops it into the cd player and we play through the album. And it's like, y'know, ~fine. Nothing incredible (they were a one hit wonder for a reason) but it's ~fine. It sounds like what you'd expect the band that made that one song to sound like, you get it. The cd runs its course and, still on the road, we decide to swap it out for something else. I flip absentmindedly through the Book O' CDs while my mom hits the EJECT button on the van's radio.
Nothing happens.
She pushes it again. Nothing happens. The disc doesn't eject. Further, it seems that all other radio function has ceased while the cd is playing. We can't switch back to the FM radio, we can't stop the disc or change tracks. Nothing. I think we could turn the volume down, but I'm honestly not sure if that's true or if that's just me repressing the reality of this one album playing at volume on repeat ad infinitum whenever the van was running. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, the point is that it's, you know, it's fine at first. Funny, even!
At first.
Hours turn to days. Days turn to weeks. Every drive, every moment in the car, punctuated by passable music under semi-melodic wailing. "Fine" begets "tiresome" begets "iritating" begets "the most annoying fucking thing I've ever heard in my life oh my G-d." Periodically, one of us tries hitting the EJECT button, just to see. Just to keep from giving up. Not every day, but from time to time, one of us gives it a shot, pretending not to care, not daring to hope.
It never works, until one day it does. The EJECT button is followed not by a distinct nothing (as has been the case on every prior attempt), but by a mechanical whir and a sudden cut of the music. The machine spits the cd out. Silence, blissful and foreign, falls. A trembling hand, outstretched, reaches to pull the disc the rest of the way from the cd slot, to free it from its prison and us along with it. Held breaths, full lungs, hearts beating in throats and silent prayers of please for the love of G-d don't let the disc get bumped back into the player (because that's a thing that would happen, remember that? remember trying to take a disc out of a disc drive and accidentally bumping it back in? man that was the worst. anyway,).
Hand grabbing disc. Pulling it free. A finger colliding with the FM Radio button. Music spilling out of the speakers that is, incredibly, not by 4 Non Blondes (though how fucked up would it have been if "what's up" just happened to be on the radio right then, right? The relief crashes through the car like a wave. There is jubilation. The nightmare is over. It is finally, incredibly, over.
..
.....
.........
And then like a month and a half later my mom decided to put the cd back in for SOME FUCKING REASON and it got stuck again and it stayed stuck until someone stole the van and crashed it into a ditch.