“Honey, look what Apple is coming out with.” My fianc? Matt turned his laptop screen toward me.
“Hmm?” I slowly shifted my Vogue-focused gaze to the image on the screen.
“You know the iPod? Well this is an even smaller version called the Shuffle and they’ll be selling it for only like $100-$140 depending on how much memory you get. Isn’t that amazing?” he asked.
“Cool,” I shrugged, and turned back to the fall fashion preview.
“It’s not just cool, do you understand how small and simple it is? I mean…” The use of the ellipses here is not to illustrate that my darling fianc? trailed off, but rather that my attention span meandered and as a result I don’t remember exactly what was said. But this is not to suggest that I didn’t get the gist of what he explained to me: words like giga or mega something-or-other, downloading, innovation and mp3 were most certainly employed. Sensing that I wasn’t recognizing the Shuffle for all its miraculous glory, Matt tried to appeal to me on terms he thought I would appreciate:
“…and not only can you have over 120 songs on it, but look how tiny it is-you could take it to the gym with you,” he explained.
“But baby, I don’t ever actually go to the gym, I just talk about it,” I answered, flipping the pages of my magazine. We both knew this was true and he gave up, turning the screen back toward himself.
Lest you think I am a completely uninterested wife-to-be, allow me to give a bit of insight into our dynamic. Matt is an engineer; I am a fashion-obsessed writer. He loves gadgets and the newest technology; I adore shoes. And while neither of us can claim to understand what the other gets so excited about, we appreciate each other’s joy and usually leave it at that. But this was not to be the case with the iPod Shuffle.
For what’s seemed like months, Matt has been randomly espousing the many merits of the soon-to-be-released Shuffle and in response I have been dutifully nodding and offering an encouraging “That’s great sweetie.” And it’s not that I didn’t think it was neat-in fact, that very word is the perfect definition for how I viewed the Shuffle, and his Blackberry, and all the other Palm Pilot, camera phone-esque technology of his that I just never found all that interesting or useful. But, for whatever reason, he wanted me to get genuinely excited about his newest fixation and try as I might to spruce up my “That’s great sweetie” comments, they just weren’t cutting it. So, imagine my joy when I stumbled upon a big photograph advertising the very small object of my darling’s desire in the computer lab. I slipped into the Logic Shop and immediately purchased it, thrilled to have been able to find one for him. I intended to wait until after dinner to give it to him, but I practically thrust the gift bag into his hands the moment he walked through the door.
“I have a surprise for you!” I squealed (That’s right, I squealed).
“You do?” he stared at me as I hopped in place, waiting for him to open it.
“Open it!!!” I shrieked (Yup. I shrieked, too. I’m not ashamed).
“Ok, ok.” He pulled out the bright green box and smiled. “How did you get this? There’s at least a two-week wait online and I’ve called all around town and no one has it. Thank you so much.” He looked so genuinely shocked and happy that I was certain I had made up for my lack o’ interest. Sure that there would be no more Shuffle-speak to interrupt me, I settled in front of my laptop to do homework.
“Honey, look at this, you can search songs to download on Apple’s website by the Billboard top 100 list for each year,” he said. Just as I was about to turn around and give him a tense “That’s great sweetie” before finishing my homework, the song that is forever linked with my sophomore year in high school suddenly crooned over his computer’s speaker.
“Oh my god! Marcy’s Playground!” I excitedly smacked his knee, startling him. “Do you remember this song!? Oh honey, download this one. Can you do that right now?” I demanded, suddenly interested as I leaned over to look at his screen. And just like that, it was on our computer.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to do?” I asked incredulously.
“That’s it. Don’t you remember when I explained all of this to you before? This is what I was talking about. And now you just put the iPod here and it transfers over,” he explained as he inserted the Shuffle partly into the computer. Hmmm…that must have been the part where my mind meandered off. But nonetheless, countless forgotten, albeit well loved songs floated out of the past and onto our new Shuffle over the next hour, causing me to elicit far to many exclamations of “Oh my God, do you remember THIS song!?” and deliver more involuntary leg slaps to Matt than he would have most likely preferred. And there I was, absolutely taken with this piece of technology that I had previously cared nothing about. So, in the end, it turned out that the one thing that could deliver me into the future was a thing that could easily connect me to my past.