A Looney Number of Tunes
by Karen Williams | April 14, 2006 - Seminole Chronicle
Just as I was wondering what to do with all the money lying around, rotting in my wallet, my teenage daughter saved the day.
"Mom," Emily said with urgency, "I need an iPod!"
"Thank heavens!" I replied. "I was worried we would be the last family in our neighborhood to get one. By the way, what on earth is an iPod?"
Emily gave me that incredulous stare that says, "Did you just disembark from the Mayflower? And did you clog your brain arteries by eating salted pork?"
She proceeded to explain (I'm paraphrasing) that an iPod is an electronic doohickey a bit larger than a stack of credit cards onto which a person can download their favorite songs from the Internet. And in case that person has many favorite songs, an iPod can hold thousands of them.
"It sounds to me that the fiends who invented those baffling digital cameras have been at it again," I commented. "How many credit cards from a stack are required to buy this thingamajig?"
"The iPod I want is $300 or so," she confessed.
I was wary of the "or so," knowing that the smaller the gadget, the bigger the price tag.
Emily handed me a piece of paper upon which she had detailed the virtues of an iPod and listed cost comparisons from various stores.
I told her I would ponder it. After all, she had been keeping up nicely with homework, even though her room-cleaning ventures merely involved moving a gargantuan pile of clothes from one part of the floor to another.
"It would be nice for her to have an iPod," I told myself. "But wouldn't she appreciate it more if she earned it via household chores?"
"Yes, but your mom didn't make you earn things," I reminded myself.
"Yes, but that was because she didn't want me breaking stuff or catching the house on fire, which always seemed to happen when I tackled chores," I reminded myself further. "Besides, I didn't turn out so bad as an adult."
"Yes, but think of how good you might have turned out if only your parents would have made you earn your Schwinns and transistor radios," I countered. "You might today be a bank president or perhaps someone who invents these expensive gizmos ... ."
That did it. I would demand that Emily earn the iPod. And in a stroke of brilliance, I realized I had an odious chore over which I had been procrastinating: finishing the interior painting of our house. Despite agonizing over it, I couldn't seem to muster any momentum.
And that's how Emily ended up painting part of the house during spring break, and that's how I ended up at an electronics store as she eagerly chose her new iPod that will hold - no fooling - 7,500 songs.
Amazed, I remarked, "I doubt there have actually been 7,500 songs written in the course of history - even if you include Viking rowing chants and Roman soldier campfire ditties. Besides, if it's music you want, you know I'm always available to sing oldies, country or quasi-opera."
The young man who was processing my credit card stared at Emily as if to say, "You poor dear - having to put up with that your whole life."
But she was oblivious. Now she had her beloved iPod, and all that green paint (for once under and not on her fingernails) would surely be worth it.
***
Copyright 2006, Karen Williams
