When I was teenager, my parents bought a computer for the family as a Christmas gift. I remember little about it now likely because I cared little about it then. It was a pre-windows pc; my brother says it was a 286 but all I know is black screen and green letters/numbers.
What I do remember is that along with the computer came a pair of headphones and a sample cd which included a variety of music... classical, jazz, likely some pop.. music that having grown up on a farm in Iowa with one radio station and 2 1/2 television channels was totally, totally new for me.
Track #7 was 'The Girl from Ipanema' and I listened to that song a million times. I would sit in front of that beige computer with my hands in my lap doing nothing else but listening over and over again through those earphones with the thin silver band over my head and those itchy black foam ear pieces. It was the most beautiful, sweet/sad, other-worldly thing I had ever heard; the most sophisticated thing that had ever entered my brain.
Today I addressed a package and sent off something lovely to an actual girl that actually lives in Impanema. The world is such a small place.
