Ahh the walkman. I have nothing but fond memories and kind words for the various forms of the "walkmen" that I worked my through over the better part of a decade from this to my Koss portable and on to the minidisc player.

The original walkman, that I purchased in the spring of 1984 as I was heading in to my last year of university, may have played a large part in my falling grades and the rapid expansion in my social life. Where music had heretofore been a large part of my life suddenly it became my all-consuming focus thanks to my own personal stereo system.

Walking through campus that fall the Cult's "Dreamtime", Talk Talk's "It's My Life" and Fiction Factory's "Throw the Warped Wheel Out" became ever present companions and all thoughts of that looming cost accounting assignment deadline could be banished. And given the analog nature of cassettes those albums and others were listened to with more care and devotion than I could ever hope to give to my musical downloads or even purchased CDs today.

What a wonderful invention.