Living in an ipod world

When I was in college I used to constantly make fun of the kids who couldn't make it across campus to class without popping in their ear buds and listening to half of their favorite song on their way to class. Granted, I'm not a "music" person and really only listen to it while on my bike working out, in my car or at work to help the time go by. It just never made sense to me that these people couldn't make it from even the furthest most points on campus, maybe a 15 minute walk, without the aid of music.

This morning while I was getting gas I was treated to beautiful sight, young love. Two middle school aged kids were walking down the sidewalk headed to what I can only assume was school. They were holding hands and doing all the other awkward middle school puppy love things as they walked. Just as I was admiring their love and taking a small trip down memory lane I noticed these kids both had something that did not exist when I was young and in love, ipods. Both sets of ears were plugged with ear buds and while I wasn't remotely close enough to hear whether they were rocking their favorite jams, one must assume there was music.

Why? Why bother doing anything that could otherwise be seen as even remotely social if you're going to insist on using your ipod at the same time? The more I think about it the more I realize that I am constantly in social settings where individuals are using ipods.

I'm not one of those doom and gloom, the world is going to shit and all that other terrible stuff type of person. But isn't the awkward days of middle school where you should start to learn the social skills that will be probably the most important thing you have later in life? If you can't even walk the 10-15 minutes it takes you to get to school without music you've got issues. If you can't do it with your girlfriend by your side then you've got a long future of World of Warcraft ahead of you.

Good luck with that!

On a sort of related note. If anybody has an old blackberry that doesn't work I'd gladly take that off your hands so I can walk down sidewalks pretending to type emails and thus avoiding giving directions to tourists. This activity would also allow me to pretend like I'm too focused to give a response to the homeless guy asking me for change.