I, Pod

My daughter showed me her iPod shuffle the last time she was home. I was amazed at how small it was and how good it sounded. I had thought about buying an iPod but was put off by the price until Kathy gave me some Father's Day cash and some pretty explicit instructions. I was not to save the money for the cruise (because she knew that that was what I would probably do) but I was to spend it immediately. Hmmm. What to do...what to do... Buy an iPod! And so it happened.

I now have an iPod mini with a six gig memory. It arrived last week and I started loading songs into it this past weekend. There are 1017 songs in it so far and I am almost done loading my entire CD library. I've only used about half the storage space.

For sentimental reasons, the first album I loaded was the first Beatles album--or a reasonable facsimile. (Music purists' note: The first Beatles album was "Meet the Beatles" on Capitol records. There was a competing label that came out with "Introducing the Beatles", neither of which I own.) I remember my two sisters and I each chipping in one dollar in order to afford the exhorbitant price of three dollars for the vinyl album. The idea was, we were going to share the album among our record players. I don't remember how well that worked, but our younger sister wound up with it in her college dorm room, I seem to recall.

Every year I imagine that I am done with hospitals and will not be admitted ever again, and every year I am proven wrong. When I do go in, I've learned it's best to have some earphones and great music to listen to while the rest of the infirm and those that would help them go on about their business. The last time I was in there I had a single room, but even that didn't save me from bustling hallways, loudly complaining hall mates, and inconsiderate health care workers on the night shift. Headphones did save me from having to hear all of that cacophony. The problem was that some of my music was on CD's and some on cassette tapes, which meant dragging lots of equipment with me. Now all I need is a little gadget smaller than a cigarette pack...which of course I wouldn't have with me in a hospital room anyway--the cigarette pack that is.