I started taking the bus to work regularly a little over two years ago. During a normal week I drive my car less than 50 miles.
Since I drive so little I usually listen to the radio or bring CDs to listen to in the car. Meanwhile, I’ve accumulated a lot of podcasts that I’d like to listen to, but really, there’s never a time I want to just sit around and listen to something.
When I drove to California in October I wished I could listen to all the podcasts I had stacked up but I never figured out the best way to do it.
I finally got a new iPod and I bought a gadget so I could listen to the iPod in the car.
But like all technological things I left it sitting in the packaging in a corner because I couldn’t be bothered with deciphering how yet another thing works.
This morning I had a 100+ mile each way drive to a work thing so I figured it was the perfect time. But I waited to figure it out until this morning and I had to leave the house by 6:30am.
I had the iPod ready but I cut myself getting the gadget out of the clamshell and I was bleeding. I had to dig around for a bandage and we have bandages that require an advanced degree in bandagology to apply. Seriously, how difficult is the world making itself?
By the time I got in the car I was in a rush but the gadget plugged into the iPod and I thought I was golden.
Except there was a problem with volume. I fiddled a bit while I was driving on the highway at 70 mph in the dark with a hard rain and I figured out if I held the prong into the iPod it would be loud enough to hear.
But my hand kept hitting a button or brushing the screen or something and the podcast kept re-starting itself. After the third time I told the podcast to go [omitted] itself and I put on the radio.
Then I went to the meeting and it was all great except that during the lunch break when they brought the receipt it said “Senior Discount” under my entree.
“Did they give me the senior discount?” I said, with HORROR.
My lunch companion agreed that’s what it looked like. I sat there, with my chin on the table and a tear in my eye thinking: this is funny, right? This is hilarious.
EXCEPT IT IS SO NOT FUNNY. I don’t even have any gray hair. Even if I’ve just completed a triathlon after a three day bender in Las Vegas, I can pass for under 50. WAAH!
But then I was like, Okay, what do I do?
“Excuse me? There’s a mistake here. I demand to be charged full price.”
I took the discount.
On the way home the gadget worked perfectly. I still couldn’t direct it much while I was driving so I hit the shuffle button and discovered all sorts of music I didn’t even know I had. I think I like that shuffle thing.
Awwww Pam! You are so not senior!! It’s nice that they’re employing that farsighted person at the lunch line, but it was totally a mistake. I’m glad your drive was okay….I know you were worried about it. Or at least it was 100 percent okay the way back when they ipod worked right.
Then there’s my neighbor, who was thrilled to turn 65 so he could go on Medicare and stop paying $1500 a month for health insurance. It’s all relative. My darling wife likes getting the senior discount. She’s an inveterate bargain-hunter. Free is the best price of all.
I agree, some gadgets like the iPod aren’t worth the trouble. I think touch-sensitive controls are a horrible idea. I bought a Sansa Fuze with touch-sensitive controls, and it’s such a pain to work with that I usually just lock it and let it play whatever the hell it wants to play. It’s just not worth fussing with it. And at least I only paid $80 for it. If I buy something and it turns out to be junk (like my last Tivo), I punish the manufacturer by never buying their brand again. I still won’t own a Motorola device, decades after their first flip-phone was such a piece of crap.