"what. are. you. look-in'. at?"

Today, I've been rediscovering what a geek I was in my extreme youth while mid-winter cleaning and coming across the old casette tape collection.

A disclaimer: I am quite aware that my taste in music is... askew, to say the least. I spent the majority of my formative years without cable, and most likely even if it had been available, I wouldn't have watched MTV. (I have cable now and the channel makes me ill. I cannot watch it. Not that they show much music anymore, but still. Ugh.) Music simply isn't my passion, it's not something I know a lot about or something I follow with any consistency (unless you count movie scores, which I exclude from this discussion), and most of my favorites are a) dead or b) tragically lame in comparison to the listening habits of other people my age. My brother has valiantly tried to make me musically cooler, but alas, has made no headway.

Anyway, a few of my finds:

1. The Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Such a child of the eighties.

2. An extremely worn out tape of "Walking on Sunshine," my ab-fab song of... kindergarten, I'm guessing. It might have been earlier. All I remember is dancing around like a fool in the living room of my old house, and the horror stories my mother tells people about that song ("and she played it over and over and over...).

3. Madonna's Breathless album, which doubled as the soundtrack to Dick Tracy, which coincided with the childhood dream to be a femme fatale. I still can remember watching the fifth graders teach each other the steps to "Vogue" in one of the gym alcoves after school and wishing I was that cool. (If you don't understand the title of this post, then you didn't listen to that song I much I did. Bravo for you.)

4. I refuse to admit how many Gloria Estefan tapes I found. (Suddenly I feel very guilty for sneering at the Ricky Martin-lovin' tweenyboppers a few years ago. Hm.)

Anybody with similar skeletons in their closet? ;)