When I was nine years old, I took an audio tour of Alcatraz and received a little tape player and a set of white headphones. It was the best tour ever.

Years later I moved to New York City and saw everyone wearing what looked like the same headphones. I wondered what type of tour all of these people were taking. It didn’t look like these people were on a tour since they were all walking incredibly fast and weren’t stopping to look up at any of the buildings. Instead it seemed liked they were listening to someone yelling “MOVE ROBOTS!!” as they weaved through pedestrian traffic.

Ipod You More

After embarrassing myself by asking a friend if he’d been on the Turbo NYC Tour, he said, “It’s an iPod.” Not catching on, I responded by saying, “I Pod you too, man.”

As soon as I figured out what an iPod was, I decided I needed one. However, I wasn’t going to get one unless I was able to get a good deal. When I found out that all Apple products were sold at the same price, I was disheartened, but not defeated.

After a little creative thinking I came up with a plan to use my job’s 501c3 status. Basically, what this means is, taxes don’t exist in the non-profit world. All I had to do was get my hands on one of our Tax Free forms and hand it to a cashier.

I came up with some intricate plans to get one of these forms, but in the end I acquired one through a lot of mumbling and some random hand gestures. It’s funny how someone will give you anything just to get you to leave them alone.

I took my tax exemption sheet and headed to the bank where I withdrew the money I would need in one dollar bills. I figured that it would appear more non-profit like if I were to pay in crinkled dollar bills out of an envelope labeled Budget. I walked uptown while trying to think of a reason why a small environmental non-profit in New York City thought it was necessary to keep 10,000 songs in a portable music player. I came up with the answer of, “the whales like Mahler”. It was vague, kind of creepy, and screamed, “Leave me alone!!”.

My mission was successful and besides blurting out, “Yup, whales are amazing creatures,” everything went smoothly. HA HA rest of the world!! I hope you’re happy with your iPods and your lack of $32 you spent on taxes.

I went back to the office to put songs onto my new toy. I stayed at work late putting on CD after CD as if I were adding water to a cup I was determined to overflow. When I finally got tired I gathered my stuff and headed home. It was about 10:30 when I got on the train going back to Brooklyn. It was the most enjoyable ride I’d ever experienced. I finally felt as if I were in a music video and that everyone else could hear the music blaring in my head. I was the star and everyone else on the subway was a backup dancer waiting for the chorus.

When I got off the subway I was a man with a swagger. I was the only person in my rhythmic world. All other problems, fears, and stresses were drowned out by my headphones.

Well, all other problems, fears, and stresses other than the guy who came running up to me and started yelling in my face.

“Excuse me?” I responded as if manners were necessary to someone who had just run up from behind me to yell something in my face.

“If I go to jail tonight, at least I’ll have a place to stay!!” he repeated.

You never know how you’re going to respond when someone screams something like that to you. It was pretty clear to me that this guy was either here to mug me or eat me. Some people will say things like, “I would have run,” or, “I would have fought him,” but logic is a distant memory when someone is screaming about the comfort of jail.

“Allllllllright,” I said, hoping he was in fact reciting a line from some poem he wrote. I wasn’t about to pull out my wallet and say “well, let’s get this over with”. Not until he pulled out a gun, a knife, or even threaten to beat me up.  

Guess What I've Got In My Pocket

“Look, mother fucker. Keep walking!” he said as he walked besides me.

I immediately became conscious of my newly purchased iPod and their perceptible white headphones. It was then that I started to get really nervous as the $17 in my pocket was no longer my concern. I started asking myself, ‘What would make you hand over this iPod? A gun, a knife? Could you take him?’.

We walked almost a full block in silence before he said, “Look, here’s the way it’s gonna work. Give me all of your god damn money!”.

I still hadn’t heard an ‘or else’ and he wasn’t even putting in the effort to put his finger in his jacket pocket, pretending to have a gun. So of course, I said what I always say to someone who asks me for money, “I don’t have any money”.

“What?! You don’t have any money!?”

“No, I don’t.” I said as I wondered if I was worsening my situation if he were to find that I did in fact have money on me.

“You don’t have any money?!!?”

I thought that perhaps my best move was to say, “Well, let me check my wallet. Oh wait! I do have some money,” and hope that he’d be so relieved that he’d forget to ask me to hand over my $300, easily sellable, non-traceable, portable music player.

“You don’t have any money at all?!?!?”

“No!” I said as I patted my pockets (the universal “I’m all tapped out” sign). He stared through my eyes and I knew that he was either going to beat me up and search my pockets himself or pull out the gun he was reluctant to use.

“You don’t have any money at all?!?!?

Having answered the question three times previously I began to understand that this person had no idea what he was doing.

“Not even a dollar?!?” he said as his voice wavered.

“No.”

The man squinted his eyes and looked forward, as if this wrinkle in his plan needed required serious thought. We walked almost a full block in silence.

Finally, the man thought of his next move and asked, “You don’t even have some change?!?”.

I once again patted my pockets to signify that I had not acquired any change in the last block.

The man looked crushed. He waved me forward and stopped walking beside me. I quickened my pace and headed for home feeling a little sorry for my mugger. He obviously was a beginner and I half expected to hear him yell to me, “Maybe I could give you my number so you can call me when you do have some money.”

My sympathy was overridden by relief. I had escaped unharmed and more importantly, still a member of the iPod community.

I chuckled for days at the idea that I could have lost my iPod only hours after purchasing it. More specifically, I chuckled for TWO days because that’s when I took my iPod into the shower with me and shorted the non-warranty covered circuitry.