In 1997, I was a senior in high school. I went to the illustrious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. Yes, I really went there. No, I can’t get your kid in!

In my senior year, I’d had my braces off, I was a varsity cheerleader, and I was finally starting to feel like I might be starting to get a handle on what this whole “being a person” thing was all about. I was in Journalism class that year when I had the opportunity to be on the radio! Voice of America…in Poland! Talking about American prom!

My classmate James and I met up at the Voice of America offices (studios? building?) in Washington, D.C. It was a Saturday morning, and I felt extremely cool driving by myself into actual Washington, D.C. Sadly, I remember almost nothing else about that day except that it happened.

Fast forward many, many years later (last weekend), when I was looking for something else entirely, and stumbled across the tape recording of that day. I was so excited to listen to it until I realized that I don’t own anything with a tape player on it anymore. Off to Amazon for a doohickey, and I was set.

A note about tape doohickeys

Tape to mp3 converters (they go by many names) are essentially a USB mic but instead of a mic it’s a tape player. So ignore what you read about needing software installed. I can’t speak from experience, but I would guess that the disc that comes with these units its bloatware at best and malware at worst. You don’t need it.

What you will need is a DAW capable of recording a USB mic input. And yes, you’ll have to sit there and wait while the whole tape plays and you record it in real time. In my case, I recorded an hour of Polish radio just to get to the parts I could understand.

For your enjoyment

Anyway, I did a bit of light editing to get out the worst spots of interference, and herewith you are presented with a little audio time capsule of what a couple of Northern Virginia teens thought of prom, way back in 1997.