Whenever he wanted to listen to the news he would load a cassette into his player.
He would listen when he was on the train on his way in to work and often during his lunch break. He liked to keep up with events, both locally and around the world. Most of the time he would use his Bluetooth ear piece, but on those occasions when he was on his own he would use his player like a radio. He was on his midday break doing this, in his corner of the office, when the receptionist happened to walk through. She was intrigued with the item she heard that involved a young boy being rescued from a rocky part of the coast, where he had fallen in. She approached him about the news item.
“Hi!” she began, “I heard that news item about the boy being saved, I hadn’t heard about it. Where did it happen?”
He put his sandwich down and wiped his mouth with a tissue. “I’m not really sure, exactly, but it was local, I know that.”
“Wow! That’s interesting. When did it happen?”
He tilted the player so he could read the label. “About three years ago, I’d say.” He saw the puzzled look on her face. “Ah! OK. I should explain. It’s not live news. I like hearing the news, but I stopped listening to the regular broadcasts because so much of it was bad. Bad news, I mean.”
She was smiling and nodding slowly. “So, this is a compilation, is it?”
“Right on!” he said. He opened his case and held up a cassette. “At first,” he went on, “I just handed them out to any family members or friends that wanted one, but after that word about them spread and they became popular, so I started charging.” He chuckled to himself. “I’ve been collecting good news items almost daily for the past five or six years. You know, people being rescued, like this one, mutually successful trade agreements between governments, improvements in health delivery, advances in technology, peace agreements, successful trials of new medications, and so on. Then, I load them onto cassettes. There’s quite an extensive range of them now. I have a website. They’re selling like hot cakes!”
“That’s a great idea. I’ll buy one.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I won’t?”
Handing it to her, he winked and said, “No. For you, it’s free.”