Nobody ever called them "portable personal stereo players" -- maybe not even the sales staff at Radio Shack. In the end, they were Walkmans. All hail Sony, except for me, that is. I ended up on the Aiwa side of the game and had these models, which I just excavated from my old bedroom in my parents' house.


Ironically, "my" first walkman was the white Aiwa (on the right) which my dad picked up for my sisters and I to share. Three sisters and a single walkman? Ha, we could barely split a bag of Cheetos without wanting to kill each other. But if you look closely, you can see the "ON AIR" insignia. Yep, this baby released a radio signal so that when we were all wearing our portable AM/FM headphones tuned into a low frequency on the bandwith, we were, indeed, all in business. It also meant that we had to be within a certain proximity of each other, which didn't help if say, Michelle wanted to listen to OMD and Christine wanted Depeche Mode. As the youngest, I don't think I ever really got a say even if I yelled my little head off.