‘Cool’ dad is really tuned out

‘A hidden gem in western Ohio’
10:46 a.m.
Tipp City offers quaint shops, cozy dining
5/25/12
How to make inexpensive, fresh flower arrangements
5/25/12
How to help the poor the 'right way'
5/25/12
Better treat soon to combat emerald ash borer
5/25/12
> More lifestyle headlines

By D.L. Stewart, Contributing Columnist 11:43 PM Tuesday, July 20, 2010

A few years after they were introduced, I decided to buy an iPod. I had no demonstrable need of one, but I figured that walking around with iBuds stuck in my ears would prove to my kids that I still was pretty cool.

Because keeping up with my kids has replaced keeping up with the Joneses as my goal in life. It is, in fact, the major reason I also have such things today as a digital camera, a smartphone and a Keurig coffee maker.

So I went to a store that sells stuff like that, where a sales adolescent showed me the various iPod models and answered my questions in terms that we both knew I didn’t understand.

“I’ll take this one,” I eventually said.

“No prob,” he replied, “but it only has five gigs.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’ll only hold about a thousand songs.”

“No prob,” I assured him. “I can’t think of a thousand songs I could stand to listen to more than once a year.”

Which shows just how much further I have fallen behind in the attempt to keep up with my kids. Because, according to a survey I just read, the average digital music player contains 1,770 songs and 51 percent of them contain at least 2,000 songs.

Mine contains 179.

And even that figure is slightly padded, because some of them are the same song performed by different artists; my playlist contains three versions of “Unchained Melody” and two of “Danny Boy.” On the other hand, what it lacks in length it makes up for in uniqueness. It may be the only playlist in the world that includes both Mario Lanza singing “Gaudeamus Igitur” and Little Richard screeching “Long Tall Sally.”

But keeping up with today’s kids’ thirst for music appears to be an impossible dream in any event. There’s now an iPod on the market, for instance, that can hold 40,000 of their favorite songs. Which means they could listen 24 hours a day for a week and not hear the same song twice.

And not even a 40,000-song iPod is necessarily enough, because they’re also subscribing to Internet services such as Napster, Mog All Access and the newl launched Rdio.com to buy even more music.

So even though I have a phone that’s smarter than I am, a digital camera I only use to take pictures of their kids, a coffee maker I never use and a 179-song iPod with iBuds I can’t stick in my ears because my ears already are filled with hearing aids, I’m pretty sure my kids still don’t think I’m pretty cool.

And probably never did.

Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.

Share this article