Attack of the iPod People

Since getting my sweet green iPod Mini last month, I've started taking it with me everywhere. (Sorry, Josh!) And I've also started noticing something: I'm very much not alone in this.

Now, I realize I'm miles from being an early adapter on the MP3 player front, and I'm sure there were dozens and dozens of people walking around with the tell-tale white earbuds sprouting from the sides of their heads long before I ever put mine in for the first time. But I swear, I never before noticed them. And now they're everywhere.

I take the 49 ten blocks up Van Ness, and during that trip, there are no fewer than five of us on the bus listening to iPods. I step out of my new garage yesterday with Mini in hand and have gone literally twenty steps when an iPodded boy walks out of the building I'm passing. On the streets, on BART, in the post office, in the library--everywhere. Everywhere I've been with my iPod, I've seen others like me.

Were I not so attached to this thing (and how did that happen, technologically retarded as I am?), I might decry the iPodization of the city, might be inclined to think it a shame that we're all so involved in shuffling songs and blocking the rest of the world out of our ears.

As it is, though, I feel like I finally get the appeal of the whole thing. And so I, too, propel myself through the streets of San Francisco with my ears full of music and a tiny slip of metal in my hand.

I'm one of them now.