every few months i'll hear a song that i'll listen to on repeat for hours.
i get this from my mother.
every song she got into, she would ruin. they may have been a good song at some point, but they've been driven into the ground by the constant blaring through the stereo at all hours.
once, the song was the tracie chapman's "give me one reason". at some point, i couldn't handle it anymore, and early one morning before she woke up, i took her cd out of the player and ran to my bedroom.
for my birthday i got a stereo with a cd player. it was a top loading one, one where you could just hit the mechanical eject button and the lid would pop open, exposing a spinning cd that wasn't quite ready to be ejected. you could take the cd out and the laser would be sitting awkwardly at the very point where it was last reading whatever cd was in it. i often touched it and pushed it back and forth along its track. it made an uncomfortable buzzing/grinding noise that was ridiculously satisfying to me.
while certainly not the highest quality, the shoddy lid was perfect for what i was going to do. i put in the cd and feverishly set it to track 9, the song i had been listening to for the past several days from the time my mom dragged herself out of bed and sort of got us ready for school, to the time i got home from school, and up until 3 or 4 in the morning when my mom would give up on drinking boxed wine and crying over the speakers and put herself to bed.
i set it to track 9 and then i quickly pressed eject, yanked the cd out and set it aside and looked at the laser reader that i shouldn't have been touching and touched it. i touched it in a way where i marked with my fingers the distance between the spindle and the laser and i, taking care not to alter the distance between my forefinger and thumb, brought it up to the tracie chapman cd and measured where track 9 was on the cd. holding my finger at the same spot, i reached for anything. i grabbed a ballpoint pen, slid my finger out of the way and stabbed at that very point. i didn't break the cd, i didn't make a huge hole, i just fucked it up. not a lot, just a little bit.
i coyly went back downstairs and quietly put the cd back in the player, just in time for us to wake up for school.
i don't know where i learned to do sneaky, evil things like that.
i do know that i never had to hear that song against my will anymore though.
i'm going to feel terrible for my children when i bimonthly listen to only one song for hours. and i'll understand why my mp3 file will suddenly be corrupted corrupted... or whatever my little sneaky shit head kids have to do to shut me up.