A book recommendation, and confessions of an Ipod hater

I think I've posted enough on men, feminism, and responsibility -- for this week.  I'll be back on topic on Monday.

Let me start off the morning with a book recommendation.  Though I've never met Sam and Bethany Torode, we've exchanged an e-mail or two and I'm a huge fan of Bethany's writing and Sam's art.   They kindly sent me a copy of their newest work, Aflame: Ancient Wisdom on Marriage.  Beautifully illustrated in hardcover (and surprisingly inexpensive), Aflame is a compilation of early Christian writing on many aspects of marriage.  For those folks who think that the ancient Church was always dismissive of marriage, preferring the greater gift of celibacy, this little book is a lovely and compelling corrective.  Pick it up, check it out, give it as a holiday present.

In other news, my stats for visitors have skyrocketed this week, as have the number of comments below my posts.  If Typepad can be trusted to tell the truth, I'm back over 3500 unique hits a day, which gets me back to where I was last spring, before a prolonged and disappointing "summer slump."  I don't attach too much significance to the number of visitors, but I do notice when the numbers drop abruptly, as they did a few months ago.

But here's my main thought for the day: Even though my wife and I finally have one, I don't like Ipods.  Let me explain why.

Anyone who has ever flown Southwest Airlines knows about the "cattle call" -- no assigned seats, boarding groups, etcetera.  When I travel with my wife, I'm eager to ensure we can sit together (preferably in the exit row).  But for years and years, I regularly flew alone back and forth between the Bay Area and Burbank Airport.   Even if I arrived early at the airport, I made sure I was one of the last people on the plane.  First off, I don't like the rush to "get a good seat."  The flights are only about an hour, none of the seats are truly comfortable, so what does it matter?  I've often been the very last to board, and of course, I would end up in a middle seat -- which suited me just fine.

I'm the sort of person some of my readers surely hate: I love meeting new people on airplanes.  Sitting in a middle seat guarantees me twice as many people to talk to, and boarding last means that the fates themselves "choose" my seat for me.  I've sat next to politicians and actors, journalists, FBI agents, and terrified children flying alone.   Southwest, bless 'em, has no in-flight movies or other forms of entertainment, so the chances of a good and interesting conversation are substantially increased.  I'm very careful, of course, not to be pushy.  If someone seems determined to nap, or stick their nose in a book, I don't persist.  I don't want to be rude.  Hence the joy of the middle seat -- the chance that one will find one person to chat with are doubled; rarely do both the aisle and window folks bring truly gripping books.

To be honest, I've even requested the middle seat when traveling alone on transcontinental flights on airlines where I do get to pre-select where to sit.  (Never, however, when traveling to or from a marathon.  Then, I always want an aisle seat for the chance to stretch.  That's even more important than meeting new people.) Really long-haul flights, like to Europe, are special joys -- there's usually someone who is so excited about the trip they're beginning or ending that they are eager to share.

However long the flight, I'm always careful in how I strike up conversations.  With women in particular, my goal is to make it clear that I'm just interested in a chat, nothing more.   In a world where so many young women are subtly and not-so-subtly harassed, I do everything I can to make clear that I'm just an overly-curious, but entirely harmless, extrovert looking to swap stories. I've had so many wonderful encounters (in the innocent sense of the term) over the years with so many fascinating people.  I consider the sheer randomness of these connections, these one, two, or even five and ten-hour friendships, to be one of the few joys of modern coach-class air travel.

Flying home from my high school reunion, my wife and I were in the last boarding group on to the full flight out of San Jose.  With no seats remaining together, we split up and I plunked myself down between a young college-age man and a thirty-something woman.  Once I was seated, I noticed -- too late -- that they both had Ipods, and had tuned out the rest of the world.  They removed them for takeoff, as required, but once we had hit 10,000 feet, the earphones went right back in.  I looked around the plane mournfully, and counted more than half a dozen other Ipods in use in the four or five rows I could see.  Other folks had hauled out their laptops (never mind that the flight is only 55 minutes), and were banging away, oblivious to their seatmates.  We were all together, sure, but in a kind of splendid isolation that I found incredibly depressing.  I had brought a copy of the Sunday New York Times Magazine, but it was small compensation for a nice chat with someone.

As I sit here at my computer, I have Itunes playing (the "Rent" soundtrack).  But I let my wife use the Ipod at the gym and at work.  There are precious few times in my life where I am in public and want to shut myself off from the rest of the world.  That's not to say that I don't like music, or that I want to be interrupted every time I go to lift weights.  But I am a pack animal (a dog person to my core) and I feel alienated by being surrounded by so many people off in their own private worlds with their own private soundtracks.

You'd think that teaching seven classes, being a volunteer youth leader, and a happy newlywed would leave me aching for time alone.  I do need my "time outs", which almost always come when running on the trails.  But the rest of the time, I'm eager to see students, youth groupers, colleagues, and new potential friends.  And damn it, modern technology is making it harder.

Comments

[Susan]

I just bought an iPod a few weeks ago, and I fought with myself about it for months before doing so. An iPod is incredibly useful, but I do hate how it creates that barrier. Especially for someone like me who's naturally introverted, it's just too easy to put it on and tune out.

I've got an ethics of use for it, though. I'll walk out of my house with the iPod on, but as soon as I reach the center of town where people hang out, I'll take it off. Same for when I'm about to walk onto campus.

I hope I won't let these standards slip over time, but I know it's all too easy to let technology take over.

[Xrlq]

I don't own an Ipod, but after reading this entry I'm tempted to buy one before my next flight. Nothing personal against you, Hugo; I'm just worried about all those other people who can't wait to strike up a conversation with me on the plane.

[Gonzman]

Yeah, I'm the other way. I have a broken iPod that I use to specifically create that barrier, as I am an intensely private person in public, and rarely welcome unsolicited conversation with a complete stranger.

[Camassia]

I try to get over my introversion too, but a plane is about the last place I'd want to do it. I don't really enjoy socializing until I get beyond the awkward getting-to-know-you stage, and plane rides guarantee that you will never get beyond that. So I was plugging into my Walkman on planes 20 years before the iPod came along. Sorry.

[Adrienne]

I don't mind chatting with a stranger in a less-confined space--I've had nice conversations with folks while waiting to board or in the airport's food court, but on an airplane, there's no polite way out from a conversation with someone sitting next to you. I don't even like it when people have long conversations on buses and the Metro, my rationale being that we should all do our little part to maintain peace and quiet when we're crammed into a small area.

[jeffliveshere]

Not to take anything away from your post, because I tend to agree with you, but you might also consider that a good deal of us who fly are terrified during a flight because of irrational fears of flying, and the 'tuning out everything' and listening to music is something like a godsend. Just one example of a good reason to tune out using a music player.

I don't like ipods because they take a perfectly good format, mp3, and wrap it so that other players can't read 'em without a little bit of acrobatics, which sucks. Also, apple somehow makes perfectly good anti-capitalist-feminist people go all gushy for some reason, when really it's the process of branding and life-style-ing that ought to be objected to (he said without explaining himself).

[Hugo]

Wretched introverts, all of you! ;-)

[Gonzman]

Sorry, Doc. Cat Person.

[Jeff]

Yep. I've got to agree with Adrienne - I get accosted on occasion by people on the bus who want to have lengthy, in-depth conversations, and don't seem to respond to any signals that I'm uncomfortable.

I'm sure they're nice people, but I don't *know* that, and I don't like being put in the position of either being a jerk and telling them "I don't want to talk to you; leave me alone" or going through the motions of a conversation I don't want to be having because I'm physically unable to get away.

I can only imagine what it's like for women in this situation. (I do notice that women, especially young white women, get targeted for these "chats" more often.)

[Mr. Bad]

I'm with Gonz in this one - I'm an intensely private person and don't invite or appreciate unsolicited conversation in such close quarters. As another put it, the very nature of an airplane makes it almost impossible to get out of the interaction once roped-in.

Wretched extroverts - can't you entertain yourselves once in a while?!

Man, talk about high maintenance. ;)

[The Happy Feminist]

I really enjoy talking to people on buses and planes, but there have been times when I don’t want to talk. If so, I will respond politely to the person’s queries and then turn back to my book. If the person doesn’t get the hint, I will say outright (in a friendly but firm manner), “I am sorry I need to read my book,” or “I really need to take a nap,” or “I am trying to think through a problem so I need to just turn on my ipod and zone out.” I don't think there is anything impolite about that.

[Emily H.]

Wretched introvert? Yes. But when I'm on a plane, there's a significant likeliness that I am:
-Delayed to the point of very high stress
-In severe pain from sinus congestion aggravated by the pressure change
-Feeling residual anxiety from the airport and/or getting to the airport
-Feeling anxiety about what awaits me when I get off the plane
-Annoyed at CNN, babies, politics, the airport bookstore, etc.

If ever I would strike up a conversation with random strangers... this is not the time.
Preventing other people from talking to me is for their own good. ;-)

[New Kid on the Hallway]

I've seen a number of similar comments about the iPod recently, and I have to wonder - isn't this just the same criticism everyone made when the Walkman came on the scene? Everyone and their younger brother carried those when I was in high school and college. So I have a hard time thinking that the iPod has made it worse.

But I'm a cat person, I love my iPod, and I hate talking to strangers on planes. ;-)

[Keri]

Interesting-- I can see both sides of this one. On the one hand, I agree that it can be kind of cool to make those fleeting connections-- I remember one bus trip during which I spent three hours talking to some art school kid from Pittsburgh, and it was really interesting, a good way to pass the time when I was too nervous to focus on any of the novels I'd brought with me.

Then again, I've had many more random encounters that were unpleasant and discomforting than I've had ones that were pleasant and enjoyable. While I know that some people who initiate conversations with strangers are, like Hugo and the guy I mentioned above, just friendly, outgoing people who know enough to be respectful of said strangers' boundaries, too many others seem to lack the necessary social skills to approach the situation in a way that's not going to be off-putting. They get too familiar far too quickly, they don't make the effort to ensure that their intentions won't be interpreted as predatory, they're oblivious to signals that their attentions may not be wanted, and so on.

Personally, I don't deal particularly well with those situations, and even find myself deeply upset and shaken by them for reasons I can't exactly explain. For me, it's worth giving up the possibility of positive random encounters in order to protect myself from the negative ones; thus, iPod, or similar "barrier" techniques. Not always, but it's helpful to have the option if a particular situation is making me uncomfortable, or if the old social anxiety decides to flare up for whatever reason and I just don't want to deal with small talk.

Besides, considering that over the years many of my closest and most fulfilling friendships/relationships have come about through the Internet, I'm never particularly sympathetic to complaints that modern technology has made it more difficult to make connections with people. Certainly, it has changed the way we meet and get to know others, but I don't necessarily believe that change is for the worse. Perhaps I'm just too much a product of my time, but I'll never understand the nostalgia for the days in which we were limited in our choice of friends and companions to the people who lived in our immediate geographical area. Yes, technology may hinder one's attempts to chat with one's seat partner on the bus, but it also gives one the option to get to know people across the country or world. Seems a fair tradeoff to me.

[Hugo]

Lots of interesting comments here. It's surely true that Walkmans have been around for two decades -- but I never saw them as being as ubiquitous as the Ipod.

I assure everyone that on those occasions when I get signals that my seatmate doesn't wish to chat, I don't push.

Yet it does seem that a lot of y'all are introverts... maybe there just aren't many of us with labrador retriever personalities in the blogosphere.

[Jenny K]

Don't even think about taking away my iPod until cell phone conversations in public get banned.

I was just fine not listening to my iPod while waiting to board my flight a few weeks ago - until everyone around me started having loud conversations with people that weren't there.

[The Gonzman]

maybe there just aren't many of us with labrador retriever personalities in the blogosphere.

Naw, I'm definately a gumpy ol' tomcat.

[Caitriona]

Tomcats aren't so grumpy. Ours are extremely demanding, though.

[mythago]

I assure everyone that on those occasions when I get signals that my seatmate doesn't wish to chat, I don't push.

Hugo, your entire first post comes across as self-centered disappointment that other people are not making themselves available to meet your need to talk to others.

While you may be great about picking up subtle signals, not everybody is. And not everybody has mastered the art of nonverbally telling your seatmate "You seem like a nice person, but I'd rather not chat with you for three hours straight."

[Hugo]

What! Me -- with my eponymous blog -- self-centered?

[mythago]

I was going on the assumption that you actually didn't realize how you sounded. My bad.

[Swan]

I, too, find it fun to have a conversation on the plane sometimes, even though I'm more of an introvert. You are the one with a problem, though, Hugo, when you get depressed if the others are not interested and you don't bring adequate entertainment.

"I do everything I can to make clear that I'm just an overly-curious, but entirely harmless, extrovert looking to swap stories." - How do you do that?

[Andrea]

I'm with you, Hugo. I've enjoyed some fascinating plane conversations, with a club DJ from New York, a Lutheran photographer from Minnesota, and myriad of others. I'm hypersensitive to being unwanted, so I usually just try a few conversational gambits, and see if they flower. If not, I sigh inwardly and retreat into whatever reading I brought, hoping it'll keep me entertained. I hover right between extraversion and introversion on the Meyers-Briggs type indicator, but I definitely get your iPod lament. :)

[Carl]

The writing on No to Prop 73 was very good. And, I agree with you.

[wolfa]

So it's acceptable to not want to talk in order to read, but it's wrong to not want to talk in order to listen to something or to use your laptop? What makes the difference?