What My Father Taught Me: The Cassette Tape

Do you have any unforgettable mementos of your family?

I'm sure there are many, but I'll choose one to talk about.

When I was in my third year of junior high (around 15 years old), I found a cassette tape in my father's room.

It had a sticker with our initials on it, and it was an old-fashioned one kept in a box rather than a transparent polyester case.

I wondered what could be recorded on it.

My curiosity piqued, I put it into the cassette deck...

After a bit of crackling noise, what started playing was...

It was a tape of me, probably around three years old, singing nursery rhymes with my father.

If you could even call it singing...

I was just babbling in baby talk.

It was mostly my father singing, really...

I've never seen the scene itself, but I have seen photos that must have been taken around that time.

If I close my eyes, I can almost picture it...

In my father's self-employed classroom, I'm sitting perched on his lap as he sits cross-legged, leaning against him while clutching a microphone.

Father: 'T, which song do you like?'

I point silently at one, and my father starts to sing.

Father: ♪ Den-den mushi-mushi, ka-ta-tsu-mu-ri~ ♪

Me: 'Haa~' (sounding like I'm yawning)

'Daddy, that's enough.' (in a sleepy voice)

Father: 'Why don't you try singing it yourself?'

I wonder if children get bored if they aren't the center of attention...

3-year-old me: "Den-den bi-shi bi-shi kaa-tatsuburii~
Omaa no atama wa, doko aruu~"

(I'm so cute~♡) I thought, as my ninth-grade self was completely smitten🥰

#WhatAreYouTalkingAbout

She started singing in a voice that wasn't quite a song, almost shouting, as if to say, 'Where did the child who was sleepy just a moment ago go?'

After that, I talked about how 'I rode my bike with my father, mother, and brother to the area where the station is,' and how 'I played tag with the older girl who lived in the neighborhood, chasing her saying, "Wait!"'

My father was probably listening with a smile, occasionally correcting my foul language by saying, "Wait, now."

It's a very precious tape; I don't want to erase it, throw it away, or lose it.

Even after I became an adult, I found it again and listened to it, and it played beautifully at the time without being worn out.

Now, I'm afraid it might snap just by playing the tape, but because I've listened to it so many times, just remembering the phrase 'cassette tape with my father' makes memories of him flash through my mind like a kaleidoscope.

When I was in ninth grade, we didn't have a VCR at home yet, so I would often record just the audio of movies broadcast on TV onto cassette tapes and play them before going to sleep.

Just by hearing the sound, the images would come to mind.

When I told my friends, they said, 'That's a cheap VCR, huh~'

I guess you're right~

There's no video of me singing nursery rhymes with my father, but it's definitely stored in my mind as a memory~

I tried applying it to my own series...

#WhatAreYouTalkingAboutSong
#WhatAreYouTalkingAboutPicture

(I wonder if I made that up on my own💦)