A Girl...

Pod People

After dinner on Sunday, I unplugged my iPod from the kitchen speakers and made a clear mental note to put it somewhere obvious so I wouldn't forget it in the morning. Come Monday a.m., however, my iPod was nowhere to be found. It wasn't in my cavernous coat pockets, it wasn't on the kitchen table, it wasn't in my backpack or my purse, it wasn't on the nightstand. It wasn't plugged into the kitchen speakers or the bedroom speakers or the William H. Rhenquist Memorial Media Room speakers. It wasn't in the bathroom, it wasn't in the music room, it wasn't in the lounge. It wasn't in the medicine cabinet or the vegetable crisper or the sugar bowl either. I checked everywhere.

My iPod was missing. I pouted. Simon let me borrow his for the day. I took good care of it and only played things he would approve of--absolutely no indie schlock.

Last night I looked for it again, but to no avail. My dear little iPod had gone podiatric--sprouted wee white feet and skipped away. So Simon let me borrow his iPod again today, and I tried, at his suggestion, to listen to an NPR podcast, but wonky genetics or just a bad attitude had rendered me conclusively constitutionally unable to get past the two-minute mark. (The low-tone faux holyness of "NPR voice" reminds me a little too much of "Church voice," methinks.) So I listened to Diana Krall instead and waited for the train while tracing little hearts onto the concrete with my boot out of love for my man and his sacrifice, two days in a row.

Remember that entry where I said I am much less of a brat than I was two years ago? Well it's true, I swear it. I didn't take the iPod out of self-importance or Veruca Salt entitlement but because Simon can listen to cds or the radio during his long car ride whereas without an iPod I'm stuck listening to the loud and germy breathing of the morning commuters on public transportation. The horror!

Don't get me wrong--I'm all about evesdropping and enjoying the "sounds of the city" (cue the ambiant shush of passing traffic), but I have NO SUNSHINE for the world before at least 10:30 a.m., so please just leave me my bubble of virtual solitude and no one will get hurt. Mostly, though, it's to keep people from talking to me because hello, I can't hear you, see these headphones?, they are blasting my eardrums, and you? are just a face and a mouth that goes moom moom moom like a goldfish in a carnival baggie.

AND YET!

There are a hundred people on the platform milling about waiting for the train and listening pleasantly to the sounds of the city, and then there is me, headphones in place, borrowed iPod awake and spinning, AND YET, you, girls, you frosted-highlight, D&G-purse-carrying, be-silk-scarf-necked girls ask me--ME!--when the train from San Francisco is coming. But hello, I can't hear you, I am listening to Diana Krall and she is louder than you think, and why can't you just use your private-school education to look at the signs like everyone else? I know you know that white headphones=>music because I know you have an iPod in every flavor so you'll always have one to match either your sequin bag or your mood. Gah.

(See what I mean about the NO SUNSHINE?)

Thirty minutes later, I'm off the train and on the walk to work when some guy stands right in front of me and starts going moom moom moom. So I take one headphone out and ask him to repeat himself (with a very sunshineless "What.") and he says, "Do you know the way to the mental health?" Um... "You know, the mental health?"

"I have no idea," I reply, to which he replies with a surly, "No idea, huh?" and then gets veryveryclosetomyface and says, "Nice headphones" all creepy-like and walks off.

Now I'm really annoyed. And paranoid.

Ever since I got my iPod last May, I've been very aware that those white headphones make me a target as they in essence announce that I'm packing a much-desired and easily-resold-on-the-streets piece of equipment worth several hundreds of dollars. I even considered getting a different pair of headphones just to throw the muggers off my track. (I've done some tae-bo, but I really don't want to have to go there in my work pants.) With that in mind, this strange encounter with the man in search of mental health was almost surely a trick to get me to pull out my iPod to pause the music so I could hear his question, at which point he would snatch it and run. Right?

Over the next half hour or so I convinced myself that it was no big deal that my own iPod was lost. It was a safety hazard anyway, and it wasn't even doing its job, which was to isolate me from the stupid question-asking girls and crazy close-talker guys. Plus, owning an iPod was just proof that I'd given into "the man" and corporate America and the latest trends and I had lost all soul and might as well start drinking Starbucks. This whole thing was really a blessing in disguise. So my iPod was lost and gone forever? So what? My heart will go on.

And then Simon called and said he'd found my iPod in his work bag. He'd put it there thinking it was his, even though mine is bigger and newer and shinier and with a color screen and three times the music and gigs and gigs of indie schlock that I just can't live without and oh, beloved iPod, I can't wait to have you back in my hands again, and I promise I won't ever ever ever let you go so long as we both shall live. Shall we meet up over grande lattes around two, love?

Posted by Leah at February 8, 2006 12:34 PM