Walk On By

A few days ago, Sony announced that they were discontinuing production of the Sony Walkman.

My first reaction was the same as many peoples': They still make the Walkman? Not even, like, the Discman, which is pretty much obsolete now. But the cassette-playing Walkman?

Apparently so.

Many people mourn the loss. Like this writer. And I join them. Not because I still use a Walkman (though we have a cassette player in our 10 year old minivan that still gets plenty of use), but because of the memories I have of it.

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I remember the summer before my senior year in high school, going on a church trip to Martha's Vineyard. The whole time on the island, I tried to spend time with a girl I liked and I got nowhere. My buddy Dan and I finally caught up with her in Oak Bluffs, along the busy main drag. He and the girl chatted away while laid down on the steps of an old movie theater a few feet away, sullen, my Walkman seemingly blaring away. Dan turned the conversation around to me, and why she wasn't interested. "Are you sure he can't hear?" she asked Dan, who said, "No, he can't hear," knowing full well that I could hear everything. Turned out she was coming off a bad break-up.

Months later, it turned out that not getting involved with her was a blessing.

Thank you, Walkman.

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But what I remembered most was having my Walkman with me when I spent 10 months in Italy in college.

I was there for a semester, returned home for Christmas, and then went back, spending a month in Florence, taking classes all day at a language school to improve my Italian enough to survive taking an actual class at the University of Venice.

For that month, I lived with a family that I hardly ever saw, since they left the apartment early, and I came home late. One of the rare encounters I had with one of them came one night when I entered the dad's study. I thought he had heard me knock, but apparently he didn't, because I walked in only to catch him drinking whiskey directly from the decanter. He didn't offer me any, but did say, smiling, "Bush," referring to the then-current vice president and presidential candidate. That was pretty much the extent of our conversation over one month: Republican primary politics, captured in a single, whiskey-soaked word.

I'd wear my Walkman every morning after I left the apartment and walked along the River Arno to the Ponte Vecchio ("The Old Bridge"), where I'd cross the river, and walk a few more blocks to the language school. As I walked, I'd listen to tapes, a few brought from home, but most of them bought from bootleggers at flea markets in Rome and Bologna. The Smiths, INXS, David Bowie, Depeche Mode, Pink Floyd. All recorded and bought illegally.

But mostly, for some reason, I listened to Sting's Nothing Like the Sun. Somehow, for some reason, it gave me courage. Which I needed, partly because I spent too much time drinking to really learn much Italian, which made my language classes kind of tough, and partly because one of the other Americans attending this particular language school was the daughter of former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. I wanted to ask her to have a gelato with me just so I could say I had "dated" her. But I never did work up the nerve.

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So, Walkman, I'll miss you. For some reason, my memories of you are tied up with things like drinking alcohol, U.S. Vice Presidential candidates (from both parties), and girls who wouldn't go out with me.

I'll miss you anyway.