Don't try this at home

My iPod and I are one.

Yesterday afternoon, I got in my car in the Vienna Metro parking lot and plugged my iPod into the car sound system. Then something happened and the next thing I know, I get the frowny face in the iPod window.

Now I've had my iPod freeze during an update, which caused me to go into a small panic the night before I flew to California. I had just loaded the entire sixth book of Harry Potter, read by Jim Dale, into my iPod and then it froze and I thought I'd killed it. After getting a hold of myself (because, of course, my iPod and I are one) I quickly went to the iPod site at Apple.com and read through all the steps and after a couple of hours, minutes, hours, I don't know how long it was, I got the thing jump started.

So when it froze and blinked off and then blinked on and I got the frowny face I didn't panic. I've been here before, I thought. I'll go home, plug it in and jump start it and we're home free.

Alas, that was not to be.

I finally forced myself into bed at 12:30 a.m. this morning after spending hours trying to revive it, jump start it, plead with it, lay hands on it, and then nearly cry over it because, as I said, my iPod and I are one.

I thought, well, maybe it just needs to rest. I'll let it rest today and then tonight when I get home I'll try again.

Nothing. More frowny face. I could it hear something that sounded like a motor inside it trying, trying with all its might to come alive again. But I felt the worse was at hand. Sure, there are plenty of these fancy-dancy new iPods with graphics and video and photos and music and stuff. Maybe a year is all it has before it just implodes and goes to the Happy Pod in the Sky. But I must say I felt like the frowny face in the window. Poor, poor iPod.

And it's a U2 iPod. They don't make those any more. It's beat up, it's scratched, it's been tossed and turned and even smushed a few times. It is the Velveteen Rabbit of iPods. Frown.

So then what else could I do.

I did a Fonz.

I hit it.

Yes.

I confess.

I hit it.

Just like Fonz use to do to play a song on the jukebox.

I hit it on the side, not once but twice.

And you know what happened.

Because my iPod and I are one.

;-)