I want tunes.

Today, we went to Borders. I had birthday gifts to get for some of the kids’ friends and some holiday gifts for my own guys. And I had a great coupon. Reed wanted music.

Reed’s taste in music is eclectic. But his favorite is hip-hop. There are very few appropriate CDs available for 8-year-olds, as you can imagine. He has some Will Smith and the Shark Tales CD. I even, not at my best moment, bought some Black Eyed Peas. From that, he learned some new vocabulary words. We asked the girl working there if she had any suggestions. It didn’t have to be hip-hop. Could be rock. Any suggestions? She had none. (Though when I picked up Nirvana, she shook her head NO.)

But they had the coolest thing. You can take any CD, scan it and put on headphones. You can hear the CD. Really, almost everything they had in stock worked. It was amazing. Reed told me he wanted a song from Aly & AJ, but not the rest. He’d like a song from Little Bow Wow (if I heard it and approved).

So we decided to go home. Listen to a bunch of songs on itunes, buy the ones we like, and make our own CD. He’s excited about the project and I’m glad I’ll be able to cherry pick an assortment that he wants and that won’t make me cringe.

Lots of people shop online and do their actual buying in stores. This is just the opposite, I suppose. I’m not much of an offline shopper, I admit, but I think Borders is doing something right.