Same Song, Different Headphones

His profile had a prompt: "I won't shut up about... this Japanese jazz fusion album from 1979 that changed my entire understanding of music."

I literally screamed. I had the same album on vinyl. It was my most prized possession. The odds of finding someone else who even knew it existed felt astronomical.

I messaged him: "Masayoshi Takanaka?" He replied in 0.3 seconds: "MARRY ME."

We didn't get married (yet), but we did spend our entire first date at a record store, pulling albums off shelves and saying "HAVE YOU HEARD THIS?" back and forth for four hours. The store owner eventually asked if we were going to buy anything. We bought eleven records.

We started a shared playlist on our first date. It's now at 847 songs. We have a rule: you can add anything, but you have to be able to explain why it matters to you. Some of our best conversations have started with "Why did you add this?"

Music was always my private world. Now it's our shared one. And somehow, sharing it made it bigger.