MindSpinner

I have coveted an iPod for years - as many years as there have been iPods. Of course, I have coveted the 30 GB model with video (though I hardly turn on the TV) and, more recently, I have coveted the iPhone, without expectation and simply as a matter of technological aesthetic appreciation for a thing beautifully designed and realized.

But this past week, fate landed a $50 Best Buy store credit in my hands, such that buying a clip-style 1 GB iPod Shuffle suddenly became a matter of $30 additional spending, not $80. I couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to buy an iPod for $30. I walked around the store twice and looked at everything else Best Buy had to offer. There was nothing I wanted or needed besides that tiny iPod. And so it has come to pass that I actually have one for my own at last, and I have done this week what I always longed to do - load an audiobook (American Theocracy, at the moment) and listen while I pick up clutter or cook a meal or drive here and there.

The only drawback I can see is that my literary choices do not alway coincide with selections offered at Audible.com, where I have fifteen legacy book credits. Indeed, of the eight or ten books that have languished in my Amazon cart for a year under “Save for Later,” only The Omnivore’s Dilemma can be found on Audible. Now it can also be found on my hard drive, waiting in line for its turn on the iPod. However, for every title that isn’t available at Audible, there is another that interests me. I do not anticipate running out of delectable possibilities.

Nothing could be easier than clipping the little Shuffle to my pocket or my shirt and listening as long as I’d like. Less iPod turns out to be all the iPod I need or want and ever so much more than no iPod at all.