Kirby: I'm thinking of upgrading to an iPod

Riding home on TRAX last week, I watched a guy yank on a wire in order to get off at his stop. It was interesting because the wire was coming out of another guy's ear.
    The guy who wanted to get off couldn't because the other guy was standing in the doorway grooving to his iPod, completely deaf to "Excuse me," and even "Hey, get out of the way!"
    Podaholics are everywhere these days, tuning out the world with their "Personal Oblivious Devices." I remember the feeling.
    My first personal oblivious device was a transistor radio. My grandmother gave it to me for my 12th birthday. It was state-of-the-art technology even though "Made in Japan" was clearly stamped on the case. Back then, that wasn't anything to brag about.
    I waited until I was alone for the magic moment. I put the batteries inside. There were two dials: on/off and tune. I flipped the switch and began tuning in the world.
    Back then the world was mostly static and Mexican baseball. I thumbed the dial, catching bits of a cigarette jingle, something about Khrushchev, and a car salesman hollering from L.A.
    Finally - at the far end of the dial - magic. My first completely portable tune was "I Can't Help Myself" by the Four Tops.
    Thanks to a speaker the size and quality of a cough drop, it sounded like the Tops were performing inside a porta-potty. I didn't care. My groove was mobile now.
    My groove got hit by a car the following week. The car came from my deaf side. Back then you could only tune out half of the world. Transistor radios only came with one earphone the size of a champagne cork.
    In an effort toward human warmth and covert listening, the earphone and connecting wire were flesh-tone. They blended in perfectly if you were Scandinavian and dead for a week.
    I was totally alive and grooving to Junior Walker & the All-Stars when I walked into the path of Mrs. Givenski's Rambler backing out of her driveway. She knocked me down and then honked the horn until her son came out and ran me off.
    That didn't stop me from blocking out the world. I used my transistor whenever I needed to escape from reality, typically in church and school, but also later work.
    I probably stuck with it too long - and certainly too loud. Today, my right eardrum doesn't work well. It's also 2 inches closer to the center of my head than the left one.
    Forty years later, I'm thinking of upgrading to an iPod. Not only do I need the balance, there's a lot more of the world that needs shutting out.
    rkirby@sltrib.com