There were collective rolling of the eyes and guffaws when Apple announced their new wireless earbuds, called AirPods. I don’t know this for certain, but I’m sure there were.

That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.

 Why not just throw away your money?

 Just open the box and throw away your money now and get it over with.

 What the hell?

 Why the hell?

 WTF?

Those were some of my personal thoughts. I imagine it was the same for others. Late night talk show hosts, including Conan O’Brien, poked fun with jokes and skits.

I don’t know why I was bothered. I had no plans on getting the AirPods or iPhone 7, which would have no earphone jack. I’m a Droid girl. Probably forever. But I do have an iPod. Two, in fact. My current yellow iPod Touch is my second Apple product. It replaces my iPod Classic (4th, 5th or 6th generation) that is triple the thickness of the Touch, has a click wheel, and if you listen closely, you can hear the whir of its inner workings when first powered on.

Classy, as we’ll call her, was still in working condition when I purchased Touchy. My buddies at the IT desk at work teased me about her. They laughed that I still listened to music on an iPod instead of on my phone. They also laughed that said device was so dated. They were tech nerds and geeks. They were up on the latest thing. I was not. That’s part of the reason I still had an iPod.

I like having separate devices. Just like I how I preferred to keep a key chain for my house keys and another one for my car key and alarm remote when I owned a car. A phone can’t store all my music. My phones always run out of memory. I then have to delete beloved photos and unused, forgotten apps. I know, I know. I don’t have to worry about space and memory if I subscribe to a streaming service.

Again, no. Just no. I’m not paying a monthly fee to access music. It’s bad enough paying crazy, expensive cable prices to have access to addictive TV shows like Game of Thrones, Insecure, Ray Donovan, and Power. Not to mention that because most of my commute to and from work, or just about anywhere is underground on the subway, I don’t have the required WiFi service to stream anyway.

Not to say I don’t stream music. I have Pandora and Spotify accounts– the free versions. I do have a soon-to-expire free trial for Tidal. I got it so I could listen to Jay-Z’s 4:44 , even though a cousin had sent me some .flac files over Dropbox. I couldn’t figure out how to play them on my iPod. Since my Tidal trial is ending, I went to Best Buy to cop a physical copy of the CD. Yup, I still buy CDs. Surely, you’re not surprised.

I digress. I prefer listening to music on my iPod. It’s smaller, thinner, and lighter than my phone, which I keep in my purse. See, I’m clumsy, and hate cases—for my phone and iPod. I drop my phone multiple times per month, weekly even. I don’t stress about it because I have insurance. If it cracks, malfunctions or goodness gracious, gets lost, I can replace it more easily than my iPod. I can and have taken advantage of having insurance half a dozen times or more in my lifetime of owning a cell phone. It’s safer being kept in my purse while I’m out and about.

Sliding my iPod into my pocket is more secure than sliding in my phone. For some reason, I drop my iPod a fraction of the amount of times that I drop my phone, though wherever I go (outside of my apartment), they go. For years, I’ve used Bose earbuds while listening to my iPod. Back in the day I heard Bose was a top brand, I happened to be given one as a gift, and from then I was hooked. No more Sony headphones for me. Of course, I haven’t had the same pair for almost fifteen years. My headphones go through so much abuse that every other year or so, I have to get a new pair to replace the cracked, chipped and sometimes one-working-ear pair. I pay for Best Buy’s protection plan so that I only have to dish out a few dollars to renew the plan with a new set, rather than $100+ for the new pair.

Even so, I’m not getting the Apple AirPods. I would be back at Best Buy every few weeks or months instead of every other year. Hell, just this week I lost a whole pair of glasses. I’m not legally blind, but I might as well be. My glasses are the first things on in the morning and the last things off at night. They come with me into the shower because I like to wash them with soap and water. Think about how much grease, dirt, and germs you have on your face. We know they’re there. Skincare commercials tell us so. That gunk makes its way to your glasses. Why wash your face only to put on a pair of dirty glasses? “Not I,” said the duck.

 

I have multiple pairs of glasses in rotation, but I have a specific, old pair I like to wear when working out. The prescription has long since expired. The thin, plain black Gucci frames are so old a technician told me they wouldn’t withstand the process and pressure of having the lenses changed again. I retired them from public use. Also, the lenses are scratched and appear dirty because some of the protective coatings, like anti-glare and anti-fog, are wearing away and flaking off.

While working out, my sweat-drenched face leads to my glasses inevitably crashing to the floor. Most of the time, it’s during push-ups or jumping jacks. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I fear that one of these falls will cause lightning-like cracks in one or both of the lenses, so I prefer to wear an old pair. Also, sometimes when they fall, I don’t immediately pick them up, so there’s a chance I could step on and break them, especially if I’m working out at home. At the gym, I immediately scoop them. I can’t count on others to be careful or even to respect personal space.

This past week my workout glasses went missing for about four days. I checked the bathroom several times. I checked behind and under the bed and dresser. Ditto for the couch. I even checked the refrigerator. Yesterday, I opened the bottom drawer of my Pier 1 bathroom chest. There nestled amongst my body lotions and oils were the glasses.

I open this drawer every day! After I shower I like to moisturize immediately to seal in the moisture. As I mentioned before, my glasses come into the shower with me. I wipe them down with those special cloths you get when you purchase them after I moisturize my whole body, including my face. After the wipe down, I select the lucky pair to be featured that day. This time when I opened the drawer I was wearing glasses. It was in the evening and I went into the drawer to look for the name of a particular lotion. And there were the glasses.

I misplaced a pair of $300+ glasses that I need to see things, people! So, yeah, no, I won’t be getting a pair of wireless Apple AirPods.