You know how you get when you are at Radio Shack and some bright witty twenty-year salesboy is chatting you up? You know it’s his job, but it’s been so long since you spoke with a bright yet charmingly scruffy boy. You didn’t when you were in college, did you, because you were too shy and modest. And now you know how to talk to the pretty clever boys, and you have confidence, especially now that you are the eighth hit for “Rate My Pudenda,” and you flirt because it is his job and you wouldn’t want to get him in trouble.
So you say hey, pretty boy, well you don’t say that but you think it don’t you, you would know what’s going on with my iPod earbuds. You show him the earbuds and explain earnestly they started out symmetrical and they are getting increasingly asymmetrical. Every time you use them you wrap them around the Nano and the next time you unwrap them they are a little shorter on one side. Now there’s only about one inch of cable on one side and eight on the other. Weird! you pout, and Weird! he agrees, let’s see if they’re adjustable. Nope, they are not. He says those are really short on that one side. Let’s see how much shorter they’ve gotten. He opens up a new pair of the same earbuds to use as a control. Can he be any hotter? Cute and young and of a scientific bent.
Who is that standing by me? Oh, that’s Gary. Yeah, forgot about him. Can’t breathe looking at Radio Wonderboy. Captain Earbuds. Whose flirty expressive face has suddenly flattened into the “Do not LAUGH at the customer” mask you have used yourself so often.
Well, you laugh, it looks like the old shrinking earbuds and the brand spanking new ones are exactly the same. Really? Ha! Well, silly me. But really, every time I looked at them they got shorter. I was sure they started out symmetrical, or almost symmetrical.
Laugh at yourself, that’s good, that’s what your smart-ass husband is doing, and if you do you might get to see pretty Shackman laugh too.
An aside: I blame Catherine the Red for this most recent humiliation. I sat with her drinking amusing wine and Lobster Mac and Cheese and I even brought out my iPod and showed her my increasingly asymmetrical earbuds . Yes! She said! The same thing happened to MY earbuds! They just got shorter and shorter. I suppose she and Gary could be conspiring in some Gaslight plot to convince me I am growing increasingly lopsided.