As I've stated before, I use a cell phone for things like calling my husband after someone sideswiped my car and as an alarm clock. I suppose if I was ten years younger I would use it for things like taking photos of me and my friends as we careened drunkenly around the subway and/or at concerts, or I would download episodes of "Friends" to watch as I wandered down a crowded sidewalk like a confused cow in Mumbai.
Apparently having just a cell phone is not enough these days. Now I NEED an I-Pod to join the rest of humanity. I see those white cords hanging from everyone's ears like mental floss EVERYWHERE. I have gone around town with a cd player and headphones once in a while and it's a nice vacation from having to listen to other people's conversations. But now we've reached the stage where, if one is out in public, everyone else is: A) Tuning out on their I-Pod. or B) Talking in a language that I can't understand anyway.
After a few short years, the I-Pod accessories market has reached one billion dollars and websites are springing up like mushrooms to feed on the mania for downloading and filing one's entire human existence.
Here are the 5 reasons why I haven't donned the white earplugs yet:
1) The price. Apple sells refurbished I-Pods on it's website at the "low low price" of $199. Since I will be spawning in a couple of months (see: Spawn of Jenns Web), shelling out anything over 5 bucks on myself seems kind of self-indulgent right now.
2) The time. Closely related to reason one. I will have a baby in a couple of months; screaming, eating, spitting and otherwise eliminating every few seconds. Downloading The Perceptionists' entire back catalogue will probably be low on my list of priorities for a while.
3) I want to save my hearing. Not that I would plan to listen to Swedish Death Metal at ear-drum piercing volume 12 hours a day, but I'm sure the baby will do enough damage to my ears as it is.
4) I need to be able to hear what's going on around me. I just mastered walking and chewing gum for chrissakes. I know myself well enough to know that I would be the type to be bobbing my head to something and forget that I'm in the middle of an intersection.
5) If I don't have the initiative to spend two hundred bucks on the inital hardware, then I am not going to want to shell out for all the little trinkets that come with it. Then again, I can see myself knitting a little I-Pod pouch, given the right circumstances.
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