I want to wish you all a happy, healthy New Year. There were a lot of ups and downs in 2012, but at least for me, it was a momentous time in my life—the year I got married.
This New Year’s Eve, I had another wedding to attend, the marriage of my good friend Mickey. I haven’t been able to hang out with him much recently—he’s always traveling for work, and we don’t live that close. So I was excited to celebrate with him and his new bride.
The morning before the wedding, I was at my parents’ house, about to leave to do some last-minute errands. Walking out through the laundry room to the garage, I spied an audiocassette sitting on top of the dryer. Weird. The label said “Tape 2.” That was all.
Intrigued, I picked it up and brought it out to the car—yes, it still has a tape deck. I started the car, popped the cassette in and pulled out of the garage. The tape began to play.
After a few moments of muffled sounds, an occasional pluck of a guitar string and the shriek of microphone feedback, I heard three distinct voices. Me, my friend Andrew and… Mickey. We began to play a song. I strummed an out-of-tune guitar, Andrew drummed on what sounded like Tupperware containers, and Mickey sang some ridiculously funny little ditty that soon made us all break down in a fit of laughter.
I remembered that we used to play at being a rock band when we were younger—but I had no memory of recording the tape. Listening to it now, though, I had to smile. We’d all grown up a lot since then, but goofing around like that was what made our friendship so special. I missed those days. What were the chances I would randomly come across a tape of us on the day of Mickey’s wedding?
The recording suddenly cut out. Apparently, we had recorded over something else. A radio program. As the DJ spoke, I started to get the eeriest feeling.
“You’re listening to the WHTG-FM 106.3 New Year’s Eve top songs of 1997 countdown,” he said.
I wasn’t sure what it all meant. Was a recording made 15 years ago somehow a premonition that Mickey would get married on New Year’s? I don’t know. But it did make me smile, and made me nostalgic for those days long before marriage was even on any of our minds.
Did I mention Mickey is a DJ? For weddings and other events. That was how he met his wife, a dancer at a Bar Mitzvah he worked.
I asked my mom how the tape got on top of the dryer. She told me she had found it sitting on the windowsill in the kitchen and meant to put it away in a box in the garage. But on her way out, she got distracted by the laundry.
A coincidence? Sure. But one that tells me that 2013 will be another year of miracles, big and small, that will enrich our lives.
Happy New Year, everyone!
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