I’ll start with music, but please don’t limit yourself.
One day, while picking up litter by the side of the hiway, I found a tape of Loverboy’s Loverboy. It was in perfect condition, like it’d only been played once! I gotta say–“Turn Me Loose!”–it was so… kismet! It made paying my debt to the gestapo state worth the infraction for which I was sentenced.
Another time: I was perusing the site of an automobile accident, and I found a tape of Primus Sailing Through the Seas of Cheese. I’d just been fired from my job at Arby’s…Go figure.
Then there was the time I was rifling through the dumpster where the possessions of my stoner next door neighbor had been deposited after being evicted, and I found the first record (this is back in the days of vinyl here) of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I never heard any of the album except “We Don’t Need No Education” which was being overplayed on the radio at the time. But, putting it on my Winnie the Pooh record player–with my pennies on the arm to keep the needle pressed down right–it put context to flunking eighth grade.
And speaking of acid. There was the time down by the river, when we found a pile of audiotape embedded in the sand. We threaded it through my Walkman (it was really a cheap imitation, but these personal cassette players were high tech at the time), and the crafty tunes of Van Halen unfolded before my eyes. It made me a more responsible citizen.