746: This Is Just Some Songs
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From WBEZChicago, it's This American Life. I'm Sean Cole, sitting in for Ira Glass. Back when Erin was in high school, she had this friend, Josh. They'd known each other practically since they were born. Their parents were friends. This was in a small, small city in Wisconsin. Fun was going down to this park with buffalo in it and throwing them hunks of bread. Anyway, Erin was 15, Josh was a year older, and one particular day-- he gave me a mixtape, like a mixed CD ROM. Just to say, this was long enough ago that the word ROM naturally followed the word CD. We're talking maybe 2007, 2008. I can see the CD ROM. You can see it in your mind's eye, you mean. You're not looking at it right now. No, certainly not. I can see like Sharpie scribbled all over it in sort of scrawled handwriting. And Swiggles is what I can recall. Josh was into theater. He and Erin did plays together, actually. Musicals at this little community theater in town. He was like, if there was a jock of theater kids, like that would be him. So charismatic, you know, like the star of a replay. Really like grabbing everything he could out of life. You could say he was a little bit dramatic. She only remembers a couple of the songs that were on the mixtape. She does remember the exact number of songs for reasons that will become clear in a minute. There were 12 of them, 12 songs. I dutifully uploaded it into my iTunes and listened to it and didn't think much of it. I definitely didn't read into it as I should have. I mean, literally. Literally because of what happened next. Mind you, this next part was months after he gave her the CD. Solidly months. I was, I don't know, poking around in my iTunes library, re-organizing something, and I'm looking at it and it dawns on me that the song titles spell out, like an acrostic. I love you, Aaron. Wait a second, so down the left-hand side of the track listing in iTunes, the first letter of every song, as you read downward,
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