The iPod and the refusnik ear

You’ve heard of the square peg that doesn’t fit the round hole. And then there’s the round peg that doesn’t fit the square hole. I’ve often thought of myself as the polygonal peg crashing into square and round holes.

But what about this: the iPod bud that doesn’t fit the ear. Who in Christendom possesses an ear that can’t accommodate the iPod bud? Hint: someone who thinks of herself as polygonal peg. How ill-equipped for modern living is that?

I wouldn’t call myself a Luddite, but I must admit that I wasn’t in a huge rush to join the great army of Pod People who march this earth. My last piece of mobile music technology was the yellow Sony Sport Walkman. Remember that?

Back in the mid eighties, the Sony Sport was the business. I used mine long after it was trendy and would have continued if the cassette tape hadn’t followed the eight-track tape into musical oblivion.

Thus the polygonal peg became a Pod Person. The iPod was a gift from He Who Can’t be Named, a gentle nudge into the twenty first century. Naively, I assumed iPods were just digital Walkmans – a way to listen to music while you walk.

Ha! This iPod is to my Sony Walkman what the space shuttle is to the horse and buggy. Not only does its 80s GBs store a gazillion songs, they also store a gazillion pictures and allow you to watch movies.

I haven’t thoroughly read the user’s manual but I’m pretty sure that if you programmed it the right way, you could get it to do your dishes, laundry, spring cleaning, gardening and tax return.

Anyway, after I got the thing all loaded up with my music and pictures, I decided to take it on a little test walk to try it out. I put the two buds in my ears and set out, feeling terribly hip; cool, even. Not only was I now one of the Pod People, I was the Podmother.

Well, I don’t think I was more than three steps into Podhood, when one of the buds fell out of my ear. I put it back in, took a few more steps, and out popped the other bud.

As I tried to re-jig that one, the first bud popped out again. And so it went. Put bud in, other bud pops out, over and over, like a sick joke.

This was all the more frustrating because none of the Pod People I encountered on the street that day seemed to be having these problems. They all seemed at one with their ear buds.

Do these Pod People know something I don’t know? Is there a secret code? Or is this simply the way Pod People keep the uncool from joining their ranks? Maybe Pod People don’t want Polygonal Pegs with oddly shaped ears in their midst.

I don’t know, but I have come up with a workaround: If you don’t walk, don’t move your head or any part of your body and refrain from breathing, your ear buds will stay put. Trust me.