Plugged in and zoned out in Arlington
It’s amazing how many people around here have got something in their ears, generally some kind of mp3 player (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3), and I’m one of them. It seems that every pedestrian on the two-block walk from NSF to my apartment is in their own little world, and on the elevator it’s not unusual for every rider to be plugged in. If the gadget people don’t yet outnumber the others on the Metro into DC, they will soon. Maybe a little more than a month ago, one Saturday or Sunday morning, I was walking into the office to do some work before Pat got up and a youngish gal and guy were walking towards me arm in arm, talking lightly, smiling, I was listening to music on my iPod, but still aware, and as they passed me, the gal gets in close to my face and says loudly (but not shouting) “HeLLOOOOOOOOO” or some such thing, and I smiled and responded “Hey, there!” Some other time it might have caught me by surprise, but not that morning, and I wasn’t bothered, which I certainly could have been under other circumstances (“The NERVE!”) and she actually seemed to be the surprised one! It’s a sign too that I’m getting older, despite my self-conception – the one that is shattered each morning — because the guy didn’t seem unnerved – I was no threat 
, and besides I was wearing my hat, and the greatest thing about my hat is that strangers smile at me … a lot. But back to the no-threat-to-the-boyfriend observation — I think that it’s helpful to understand that some (many?) men are sometimes controlling, I suspect, because at some primal level, possibly beneath consciousness, but often not, they are simply worried about getting their butt’s kicked.
I wasn’t upset, I think, because I’m pretty sure that my gut knew an approximation of what that gal was thinking because I’ve often thought it myself and smiled amongst the crowd of similarly-adorned people …. “Are you even present?!” … “Well, more than you thought apparently, but no, not really, and not as present as if I was in the jungle getting stalked.”
And as I write I am appreciating what my little iPod has done, bought by my wife, Patricia, as a birthday present almost one year ago to the day, with encouragement of friend/colleague Mary Lou to get WITH IT. It’s changed the way I exercise – exercise used to be a chore, but I tear it up now listening to Papa Creech’s fiddle on Hot Tuna’s I Know You Rider, Ted Nugent’s guitar on The Great White Buffalo, David Lindley and El Rayo X’s Mercury Blues, and quite a few of my other 210 songs. One late night at Alive Hospice in Nashville, the patients, including my friend Vivian, were in the hall during a tornado warning, almost a party and certainly fun, Vivian with my iPod, flipping through the songs and stopping on the Monkey’s I’m a Believer (this is a big confession for me) and she started singing along out loud, head swaying, and I tried to shush her, but she looked straight at me, nonchalant as you please, and started singing louder – I smiled. In fact, that Saturday morning when the gal had said hello, I was remembering Vivian to James Taylor, which I do now when I want to shed a few — You Can Close Your Eyes, Mexico, You’ve Got a Friend. So the iPod isn’t only about isolation. In fact, in writing I am wondering if that’s why I got the hello.
Nonetheless, I have made some changes in response to recent observations – I turn the iPod off as I approach the Apartment building’s reception desk, the guard’s station at NSF, get on an elevator, etc, in case anyone says “Hi”, which the guards always do (“Happy, Monday!” in a Caribbean accent) or as a prompt to say “Hi” myself, and it goes without saying (?) that when Metro’ing into DC with Patricia on a Saturday that I’m not listening unless she’s wearing one of the plugs, but generally to Bill Moyers and not Ted Nugent.