Many Christmases ago, I found my first compact disc player under our tree. I immediately hooked it up to our stereo system.

My wife hates anything to do with electronics -- she even treats the hallowed TV remote control with disdain -- so I don't know how she decided to purchase such a particularly nice piece of audio equipment. When I asked her that very question last week, she said, "What CD player?"

OK, there is an off chance Santa shopped for me that Christmas, but I recall that our friend Connie bought the very same CD player for her husband, Wayne, the same year. Perhaps she and my wife were in cahoots.

My CD player was wonderful. I could load six discs into it for hours of listening (after, of course, I had bought hours of music). In our respective homes, Wayne and I could listen to music in a format not involving wax discs or cassettes.

Well, he could. I only sort of could.

You see, as I began listening to my new CDs, I noticed an oddity. Each disc would play the first two songs, then the fourth, the fifth and so on. The third track of each CD was missing in action.

That occurred on every album, every time. I cleaned those CDs and the machine itself. I prayed. Nothing helped.

I didn't stop listening to my music, and I didn't give up hope. I knew, for example, that the third song on Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska CD was Mansion on the Hill, only because I already owned the record. The one way I could hear the song digitally was to put my CD into another player.

Wayne's, for instance. His CD player didn't boycott Track 3.

Much later, when I told my friend David about my inability to hear complete albums, he suggested I compile a mix tape of all the songs I had missed over the years. Every song would be the third track from one of my CDs. It was an intriguing idea.

Why, I could even call the mix tape Track 3 . It would be an entirely new album of fresh music -- for me, at least.

I never made a mix tape, but I still have my old CD player. I considered taking it in for repairs, but, save for its one little glitch, it has worked great.

Besides, perfection is overrated. Repairing my machine's unique anomaly would be the musical equivalent of gluing arms onto the Venus de Milo, and the Greek statue hasn't let her handicap distract from her timeless beauty.

In fact, you might even say she is the Track 3 of classical art.

MOORE ON WORDS: We get our word "music" from a line of languages stretching back to the ancient Greeks, where it meant "of the Muses." The Muses, of course, were nine goddesses who presided over the arts, sciences and literature.

Can you name the Muses and their specialties? The Online Etymology Dictionary lists them as: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (love poetry, lyric art), Euterpe (music, especially flute), Melpomene (tragedy), Polymnia (hymns), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy) and Urania (astronomy).

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.