Part 313: Not Allowed Lending!

RECORD STORE TALES Part 313: Not Allowed Lending!

By popular request, here’s a story about loaning your CDs out to people who don’t appreciate or take care of them properly.

Really, I should have learned my lesson in Grade 12. I loaned my brand spanking new cassette copy of Van Halen I out to this kid at school, Jamie. He was a nice kid, so I didn’t have a problem with it. What I did have a problem with was the condition in which he returned it: without the cover! How could he possibly have lost it? He did eventually find it and return it to me, but he didn’t seem to understand why it mattered. Who does that? Lots of people, I’m afraid.

At the Record Store, I befriended a customer named Len, who I actually went to highschool with, but didn’t know until after. We had the same group of friends who were all into the same music. I turned Len onto Marillion and he began borrowing my Marillion discs to burn. What upset me was when I loaned him my limited edition copy of Anoraknophobia. Remember how Marillion put out limited edition digipack versions with bonus discs? If you pre-ordered, your name would make it into the CD. My name is there inside Anoraknophobia, and the followup Marbles as well.

img_20140805_180021Len returned my copy of Anoraknophobia – a sold-out limited edition – with a crease in the spine. Probably from trying to photocopy the booklet. I wasn’t happy and I told Len I wasn’t loaning out my CDs anymore. He was sorry he had done it, and understood that I was upset, but that didn’t take the crease out.

Later on, I bought a condo. I moved into the same building as a friend of ours, somebody we all had met via the original record store location. Her nickname was “San Francisky” – a long story that involves my dad and his inability to pronounce things correctly. She was a nice girl most of the time, but very pushy. I have issues with people who try to persistently try to push me around, so I had begun to distance myself by the time I moved in.

A few weeks after I moved in, she came down to my unit. She was having a party upstairs. She needed some music.

“Do you have any Beatles?” she asked me.

“Yup, I have the Red and Blue albums. They’re excellent. The Red one probably has all the songs you’d want for a party.”

VH 194_0001She asked me about a couple more CDs.  Van Halen was one. I got them out of my CD tower.

“You’re going to take care of these, right? And you’ll return them tomorrow morning?” I asked pointedly.

“It might not be tomorrow morning but I’ll bring them back, of course.”

I knew how this girl took care of her own CDs. I had bought enough used discs from her at the store. She always bitched when I told her the discs were scratched up. She never put them back in the case, and left them out all the time.  Knowing her ways of handling discs, I added additional instructions.

“I want you to be careful with these discs, and put them back in the cases when you’re done. I also want you to make sure nobody else touches my CDs. Only you.  I want them back exactly as they are.”

She gave me this flabbergasted expression. What she said next was the sentence that ended what was left of our “friendship”:

“What do you care if they get scratched?! You work at the store!”

That was it. I told her I wouldn’t loan her the CDs if that was her attitude. She went upstairs in an angry huff, and we never socialized again. I ran into her now and then, and she was always bitchy.  The friendship was over.

I really had no regrets about that. One thing about me is that if you want to be my friend, you have to accept me as-is, quirks and all. You don’t have to understand them, but you have to accept them. Nobody can change me.  The only person who will ever change me is myself, and taking care of my property is one thing that doesn’t need changing!

42 comments

  1. Well, you know my take on the situation…I did not even like lending out pencils to anyone: return my pencil all chewed up…let alone CDs and cassettes.

    I wear kid gloves with others’ property, and I expect that of others and my property but I don’t always get that reciprocated. Now that borrowing things isn’t tied into the social strata of high school, meaning if I refuse to lend something out to a HS friend and I say no, this will be the thing that kills the friendship, I feel very comfortable today saying no.

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    1. There was this one kid in grade 10, I’ll never forget his name. Costas Aresti. Everybody warned me first day of school, “Don’t loan your pen to Costas! He’ll leave without giving it back! Costas never comes to class with his own pen!” It was true!

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      1. ….Well, my pedantic rules always went out the window if I had a crush on a guy. They would get my pens, paper… jewelery even – every time. I was such a fool for some guys….

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        1. Oh I probably would have done the same for a girl, but I wasn’t able to speak to girls back then. I was a regular Rajesh Koothrapolli. I would stutter and say stupid things.

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        2. I was too. Nervous, easily embarrassed. I was also literal with a concrete mindset, so jokes and teasing often went over my head – which didn’t help…

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  2. Ah…San – Francisky! Does she still live in your building?
    I agree about the lending thing. You are either a person who cares about other people’s things (and yer own) or yer NOT.
    I loaned out my limited edition 2 disc version of army of darkness (boomstick edition) to a buddy years ago, and when about 6 months had passed aND he hadn’t returned it, I asked about it and he said that he didn’t have it! 2 years later he found it and asked me if it was mine…whew! Close call
    Glad I didn’t lose it but the point of the story is exactly what you are talking about.
    Absolutely…who does that?

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    1. T-Rev, she does not live here anymore. She moved out about 10 years ago, got married and stuff. She sent me a snitty message on Facebook about how I needed to shave my beard or something, and haven’t heard from her since.

      GLAD YOUR GOT YOUR BOOMSTICK BACK! I knew you had lost it and I have looked everywhere for a copy. No avail. Glad he found it. That thing is hard to find…impossible at a good price.

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      1. Yep its the coffee stains, the food stains the ??? nasty I always tell my students when they gunk up their music its not a textbook take care of it!!! Its your music!!!!

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  6. I don’t lend out music either,usually I have my iPod with me so if a buddy wants sumthin from it I’m right there so they can transfer it to there iTunes folder. I would not lend it out as I have 12,000 songs on it!

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    1. But it doesn’t happen. When we were kids we were in the habit of loading Atari games out for a week, with the neighbors. We always took care of those, but then you had that one neighbor who always lost your instruction book.

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  8. Agreed about the red one being the more appropriate party choice. It’s funny, even though I prefer the 67-70 parent albums, I think the 62-66 is the much stronger compilation.
    Neat how the coloured compilations have obtained classic status too!

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    1. I’m with you on this. After a few experiences I said no more. I’ve also told my wife that if anybody calls asking to borrow something they need to ask me. Same thing goes for books and tools.
      On the CD thing I have found that if I say to the wanna be borrower “If you bring me a blank I’ll burn one for you.”not only solves the problem but 9.9 times out of a 10 you never see them again …until the next time they ask to borrow a CD

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      1. After I got a burner there was no reason to loan CDs anymore…except to people who insisted they wanted to make their own “greatest hits” or whatever. But even then I got them to write down the songs and I would make it.

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    2. They have, they were even reissued and remastered in that Beatles frenzy a few years back. I never upgraded mine to remastered (I already did that with the studio albums). I do like the cases mine come in. I don’t know if you can tell by the picture, but I have the versions that came with the jewel case pieces in the same colour as the album cover — red or blue. Took a while to find these both.

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  9. When I was at uni and a smoker, I once offered a cig to a friend who I guess I knew was a non-smoker. But that is what you do, isn’t it? Offer around. He must have been pretty sick of having cigarettes poked towards him, because this time he said ‘Yes’, took a fag, broke it in half and dropped it in the ashtray. I remember being shocked as he calmly observed that once I’d given the item to him it was his to do with as he wished.

    So setting your ground rules is pretty important. If you were clear (and sounds like you most certainly were) then the other person has a choice. Agree or don’t borrow/take. Pretty clear.

    I learned my lesson the hard way with a treasured vinyl record, a long time ago…

    SING A SONG IN A SHAKEY VOICE

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        1. Who does that? Seriously, who does that?

          I worked with one guy, he married young and divorced young. And just to be spiteful, in the divorce his wife took CDs she didn’t even like, just because she knew he did. That was evil, man.

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        3. I assumed you’ve seen High Fidelity. Have you seen the deleted scenes? The one where the scorned wife (Beverly D’Angerlo) sells her husband’s most prized 45’s for peanuts just to spite him?

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        4. Yes, it’s a wonderful scene. I enjoy how I’m torn between the options:
          (a) Take the vinyl and run
          (b) Sympathy for the abandoned wife (and indeed any partner of a vinyl junkie)
          (c) The highly ethical stance taken by our hero

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    1. I think I was thanked on the CD by My Wicked Twin (Brent Doerner of Helix) but that was because I was actually writing stuff for them at the time. Shit, I wanna check the CD now.

      Yep there I am! I should review that damn thing.

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        2. I’m excited for you!
          I have a ton of ideas for blogposts, but as you well know, to write well you need time to write. I have a feeling I’ll have even less time in the upcoming weeks to play game AND write. We’ll have to see how this academic year goes.I might be down to one post a week again for the next bit due to exhaustion!

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        3. I’m leaving my options open, I may go down to one post every 2 days, but we’ll see. I’d like to keep up with one a day but life must come first.

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  11. I feel your pain. I honestly don’t like lending anything out. Music, books, DVDs… I don’t even like people touching my stuff never mind taking it home with them. I guess that makes my a bit like Nigel Tufnel. Don’t even look at it!

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  12. At this point, I’d have to really love you to loan you something of mine. Over the years, though, I have done it, and results have been varied. A lot of people I know understand my mania when it comes to care of my discs, so things come back in fine shape. But the number of times I’ve loaned stuff out and it comes back looking like a dog’s breakfast or not at all has been too many to count. Istill have moments where I know I should have a CD in my archives and I don’t and it bugs me forever until I remember who had it and I know gettig it back is a pipe dream. I’m more likely to just rip you a CD-R and say ‘have fun!’, at this point.

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