Music

My ipod nano fritzed out today.

It was working on the way to the subway. Then I got out of the train in Brooklyn and it rebelled. It paused on a song for a second but instead of playing it passed to the next song and then, after a second, to the next. I tried hitting pause and play again. I tried turning it off and on a few times. The problem, however, remained.

I bought the ipod in late January. I remember the exact day because my ex-boyfriend and I had a fight the day after. The ipod is not even six months old. I know these things are not built to last forever but less than six months is downright disrespectful.

Well that’s okay, I thought, I’ll just take it back.

But that was when a strange thing occurred.

I am organized with receipts. I rarely toss them, especially in the case of electronics. Yet I looked and looked and the nano receipt was nowhere to be found.

What to do? Spend another two hundred bucks on a product that proved highly unreliable on take one? Pass an eternity at the Apple store in SOHO getting it serviced, which regardless will cost a good portion of the original price? Wait it out until my birthday comes around and I can hit someone up for a new one?

AUGUST THE 8TH

Or, perhaps, do I take the sudden lack of a portable listening device as a sign?

Perhaps it was meant to be, this breakdown of a modern luxury good that, while filling my head with music, closes off, to a certain extent, the outside world.

Portable distractions are the norm these days: ipods, cell phones, blackberries, and laptops. People are plugged in. And there’s nothing wrong with this, per se, except that perhaps there is even less wrong with not being so distracted all the time.

Now there were things, obviously, that in the course of today I did not want to hear. For instance the student in my second year Spanish class who looked up in the middle of taking his exam and asked me what ‘estar’ meant. Or the toddler in the coffee shop who, after I smiled at him once, proceeded to scream with abandon until I would smile at him again. And again.

But there were other sounds I caught. There was the fat gay couple walking down the street, hand in hand.

“I can’t always be perfect!” one exclaimed.

“I know, baby,” responded the other.

There was the guy in the Armani suit and shades carrying a chic leather briefcase making a cell phone call.

“Grandma? It’s me. How are you feeling? Did you get the books I sent?”

I decided not to replace the nano. Fate will decide when the next portable listening device comes into my life.

In the meantime, I’m listening.