Long before the age of social media and music streaming apps, us kids used to entertain ourselves with things like cassette tapes.

The year was 1987. Who knows where we were driving to but my dad was at the wheel, my sister rode shotgun and I was in the back. In Keith Morrison’s voice from Dateline: “It was a calm afternoon as the Burns family drove through a neighborhood street in San Diego....UNTIL...” Tiffany’s “I Saw Him Standing There” came on one of my mixtapes. Naturally, me and my sister - who I did not normally get along with - were fully obsessed at the time, and started screaming at the top of our lungs.

My dad did not share the same excitement. In fact, he mistook our excitement as immediate code red danger as we nearly rolled off road and down a ditch. He thought from the intensity of our voices that we were fighting or about to run something over or crash so he flung the car to the side and screeched one wheel up a sidewalk.

For the record, I remember I spent a lot of time on that mixtape. I'd even use a boombox to splice in extra choruses to my favorite songs! In any case, and I'm sure Tiffany would agree, my dad ejecting the tape and holding it long enough to throw out the car window on the 8 freeway going westbound was not only rude but actually dangerous.