Here's looking at you, pod. (Staff/TIMOTHY GUY)
When my sister-in-law, whom I failed to notice standing five feet away, emailed me a cartoon, I could no longer deny I had become the type of person I abhor.
I opened the email on my hand-held device and saw a well-dressed gent at a cocktail party. A cone-shaped "satellite dish" rested on his neck. The kind pets sometimes wear after surgery. The cone, explained the gentleman, made it more difficult for him to keep checking his iPhone.
I don't have an iPhone, just iPhone envy. So last June, for my birthday, my wife bought me an iPod. At first, I was unimpressed. I had a tiny iPod. Why would I need another one? My wife didn't know much about this gadget, either. She thought I could store more music and get online by using our WiFi or swiping someone else's.
But over the months, I've become so joined-at-the-palm with my pod — "like a teen-aged girl" is how a young colleague phrased it — that I may be a prime candidate for the conehood.
I've discovered, to my amazement and chagrin, that this thing has more uses than I ever dreamed of. It goes far beyond the guiltless pleasure of sponging off of someone else's WiFi instead of being strapped to a steep monthly fee of which my wife, Mrs. Fifty Cents Is Fifty Cents, would never approve.
It's a barbecue timer, list maker, note taker and converts my voice to text. During the summer, when my wife was in Oregon, I struck up an intimate relationship with the female voice residing inside my pod. She was only a fingertip away.
"How did the Yankees do tonight?" I'd ask Siri.
"The Yankees trounced the Minnesota Twins 10-4." (When the Yanks stopped trouncing, I stopped asking.)
Then there are the apps! I've barely touched the tip of the app-berg, yet my iPod is iconic: flashlight, book light, metronome, atlas. Not many yet, but the potential is virtually (how apt is that word for an app?) endless.
Mrs. Fifty Cents (big surprise!) bought me the starter model, so the iPod iHave lets me shoot videos and photos, but does not let me view what I am shooting. Perhaps this was Apple's humane attempt to protect normal people who haven't succumbed to iPhones from becoming total iDweebs. It didn't work!
I've become the guy in the cartoon: connected to the world, disconnected from everything else. The other night, watching baseball on regular TV, I read a story (via iPod!) about German researchers who'd discovered that eating popcorn makes movie-goers immune to those annoying commercials on the big screen. Fascinating!
But when I somehow became undocked from my universe, I realized that my wife and dogs were nowhere to be seen. I was vaguely certain that we had all been occupying the same room. I was 100 percent certain that I never saw them leave.
The last few months have convinced me that if my iPhone envy had been alleviated, allowing me to make calls and linger online all the livelong day, I would probably be divorced, not just from Mrs. Fifty Cents but from the human race and entire Animal Kingdom.
But, of course, I'd still have Siri.
Reach Dan Bernstein at 951-368-9439 or dbernstein@PE.com
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