We’re moved into our new pad in the ‘burbs and my commute has increased exponentially. It used to take me 10 minutes to WALK to work. Now its 20-25 minutes in the car when there is no traffic. It hasn’t gotten on my nerves yet, although I’m sure it will in fairly short order.

I’ve been using the time to think. Now, mind you, I get my news from Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, so I ain’t thinking about world affairs. I’m usually not thinking about work, or sex (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) or chores. These past few days I’ve been thinking about my i-pod.

I don’t have a nano, or a nanoo nanoo or whatever its called. My i-pod is one of those now gigantic seeming ones that is 5 inches high and holds 10,000 songs. I’m happy with it and while I’d like a cute little pink one, I’m okay with my 10,000 song bohemoth.

When the i-pod first came out, there were a lot of people who downloaded their entire music collection to it and got rid of all of their cd’s. At first this seemed to be a pretty good idea. Now that I’ve had a few years to mull it over, I think of how short sighted that is. What if your i-pod breaks??? The i-pod is proprietary, meaning you cannot transfer your songs from the i-pod to another computer, or from your i-tunes to another computer. You would have to burn all of those songs onto a disc. I think that would be the definition of irony.

Then I thought, how come it seems like the only songs that come up on ‘shuffle’ are songs put on there by my husband? How come no Janet Jackson, no J. Lo? No Leo Sayer (He sang ‘you make me feel like dancing, for those of you who don’t know who he is. He is a legend.) It’s rare that I hear a Smiths tune even though I know there are several albums loaded on there. I mean, the i-pod is supposed to be mine. Why is it filled with Fugazi, Television, Face to Face and Dave Brubeck?

We all know how music evokes some pretty powerful emotions. It also holds memories. I remember bringing the first Madonna album to our 8th grade dance and the kids had no idea who she was. I remember dancing to “In the air tonight” with the cutest boy in high school. Every time I hear that song, I remember what I was wearing and how I felt. I remember that “Tainted Love” came out the same year of the tylenol arscenic scare. One song that brings back a ton of memories is “Forever Young” by Alphaville. I used to have so many memories associated with that song. It was practically our theme song in college, and I used portions of it to set up parts of my novel. Unfortunately, Napolean Dynamite changed all of that. Now, instead of sighing deeply and thinking back to my glory days, I think of that movie, of the girl with the side ponytail and her prom dress. I love that movie. But, dammit, I want my memories back!

These days, it seems every commerical is using the music of my youth to sell something. The one that springs to mind is the printer commercial that uses “Pictures of you” by the Cure. And then there is the swiffer commercial that uses Devo. These bands have clearly sold out in ways that would have seemed unimaginable to me when I was 17. So, when I hear Pictures of You, while it used to remind me of my sophomore year in college, now I think of that commercial. And every time I hear that Devo song, I can only think of that woman jumping around with her stupid swiffer.

I think the music industry is in cahoots with everyone else to hijack my youth.

These are the things I think about during my commute. I’m sure as time goes on, I’ll have more productive thoughts. Or, maybe not.