Life Preservers

I Got a Charge Out of It

June 5, 2014 at 6:29 pm Leave a comment

When iPods first came out, I did want one. However, as the current or former owner of two portable record players, three transistor radios, approximately seven different clock radios, two boom boxes, a stereo (with tuner, turntable, cassette player, CD player, then dual cassette player, then five-disc CD player), a Walkman, three different portable cassette players, a portable CD player, a CD player-radio that hangs on the wall, a TV cable package with stations that play uninterrupted music, and two computers able to operate iTunes — not to mention a piano, a harmonica, an accordion, and a decent singing voice — I wasn’t exactly camping out or breaking open the piggy bank to be among the first to own one.

In fact, I only got an iPod Shuffle about five years ago. Thanks to Apple’s annoying habit of updating iTunes so often that sorting out which computers had which music and which version to sync with, it was actually 2013 before I had an iPod — with music on it.

I used it exactly once. And forgot to turn it off.

So, the next time I went to use it, a couple of months back, it would not play. I read the instruction booklet and realized I needed to charge it using the USB cable that it came with. Hmmm. I checked the box it came in. I searched the drawer where the box was stored. I searched the rest of my home office. I searched other rooms and other drawers and even dragged from the living room closet the big, bad basket of tangled, writhing, Indiana-Jones-awaiting, possibly-useful-but-unlabeled gadget cables.

I did not find it. I could not think of where else it might be.

To be fair, my thinking is done with a brain old enough to have bounced in my skull as I danced in the backyard with my little sister and a transistor radio playing that cool, new hit single, Benny and the Jets. My memory being what it is, I couldn’t be sure enough to call Apple and say it hadn’t come with one; I couldn’t be sure enough that it had come with one to justify additional searching. Feeling a bit despondent about the charger — and my mental faculties — I gave up.

After stumbling over the big basket of miscellaneous cables for a couple of months, I decided to sort out all of The Things that creep and crowd into the living room closet when I’m not looking. (And the things I cram in there when company is coming.)

As any one who has owned a home for more than two years knows, efficient, effective clean up is all about moving your stuff from one place to another. And, so, I decided to move all board games from the closet onto some living room book shelves. (Think of it as a game of Blockhead and Jenga and Old Maid cussing.) Among the stacking and fitting of various (why the hell can’t the board game people decide on a standard size?) boxes, there was a card box. Just a little wooden box, decoupaged by my Mom back in the Elton John days, to hold a deck of playing cards. The last time I recall opening the box was when I placed an un-used, souvenir deck into it and closed the lid, probably eight years ago or so.

I truly do not know what compelled me to open the box. Sentimentality? A Pandoric curiosity? Some not-dead-only-sleeping brain cell? Who knows. But, I opened it, and, lo and behold, it held: a deck of cards. And the iPod Shuffle charger!

How in the heck did it get there? I’ve had no Eureka moment, no recollection, no memory. Nor can I think of one reason why, on any given day, in any situation, I would have considered a deck of cards as the right spot for part of my Shuffle.

Today’s life preserver is: The giggle-inducing discovery of an unintended pun.

Entry filed under: Humor - Commentary, Life Preservers. Tags: ipod, memory problems, missing items, search, shuffle.