Have you ever lost a friend? Not, like, lost them at a concert. I mean, have any of your friends died? A few of mine have. This is a story about losing a friend. And the pain of losing that friend. It's a story about how groups of friend cope with the loss of a member. And about family, and brothers. But mostly, it's a song about the power of silly pop songs. I hope you love it, because I'm very proud of this story.

Season 3 Episode 16

Thank you for downloading this episode.

👉The story begins at 03:20 and the tiny lessons begin at 15:45

👉You can find the transcript after the Credits!

👉Visit our website to download the Podcast User's Manual and find out more! https://alittleenglish.com/

A Little English is written, produced, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered and scored by Edward Cooper Howland.

All stories are either in the public domain, or written by me.

Copyright 2023 Edward Cooper Howland

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. My name is Cooper, and this is…A Little English. Every episode, I read a short story. After the story, there are three tiny lessons.

I hope you guys are all enjoying this Forty Stories project. If you are, please do me a huge favor and share this show with a friend. Do you know anyone else who likes podcasts? Or who is trying to improve their English? Please share this show with them. I don’t do any advertising or anything, so I need your help to reach a larger audience. Thank you!

I think I can safely say that we have entered act two of forty stories. Pretty much every story has three acts. There is a beginning, a middle and an end. Middles are usually the hardest part to write. But actually I’m really excited about this, because it means I’m done introducing characters. The world is built. So it’s time to really explore these people and this world. Time to have them meet each other and interact! I think it will be really exciting.

By the way, there is a content warning on this story. It’s about death. Specifically, it takes place a few years after someone commits suicide. So nobody dies in the story, but somebody did die a few years ago. So if you don’t feel good about listening to that right now, come back another time. It’s a good story, and important, but it’s kind of…heavy.

Also, there are a lot of song titles in this story. And I think that if you don’t know the songs, it would be very helpful for you to read the transcript, get the names and listen to them on youtube or whatever. I think the story will make more sense when you hear the songs.

So anyway, here’s the story.  It’s called “Mixtape”

I thought I was early, but they were already waiting for me. Kevin and Ben were sitting in camping chairs around a pile of wood. And there was another person with them. Maybe a girl? Or a little kid? Either way, I was pretty upset.  It took a few minutes to climb down from the top of the sand dune, and a few more to get close to where they were sitting. The mystery person was sitting on the other side of the pile of wood.

I dropped my case of beer down next to me and just started yelling. “Guys, what is this? This is supposed to be our night. Remember, we talked about this? No girlfriends, nobody but us and - “

The kid stood up, and I could see that it was Finn. He was apologizing.

“Tommy, I’m not gonna stay. I was just talking to Kevin last week, and I told him about this thing that I found, and we thought you all should see it. Or, like, hear it.”

I was so shocked that I just sat down in the sand.

“Oh Finn,” I said, “I’m so sorry, kid. I had no idea