Sometimes, iPods need a good spanking.

Tuesdays are unofficial “Laundry Days” in our household. I say unofficial because, generally speaking, each Tuesday comes and goes with little to no pomp and circumstance. And, even though the event is announced to the public (my husband and kids) in advance (the night before), it seems I am the only person in the house who participates in the ritual. Every freaking week. But I’m not bitter. Much.

So, three Tuesdays ago, I went through my usual routine of: 1. gathering all the kids dirty clothes from upstairs, 2. taking them to the laundry room, 3. sorting them, and 4. performing the necessary pre-treating, washing, drying, and folding, before 5. putting the then-clean clothes back in their appropriate closets and/or dresser drawers.

I finished washing the third or fourth load and threw it into the dryer. Started the dryer, and went back to sitting on the couch eating bon-bons scrubbing toilets. About five minutes passed, and I realized that I had been subconsiously hearing some unknown repetitive noise.

Repetitive noises drive me crazy. Short drive, I know.

I investigated and discovered the noise was coming from the clothes dryer so I went into the laundry room and opened the dryer door. The noise stopped. Which was a big relief really until I realized that the “noise” had actually been my son’s iPod slamming against the sides of the dryer drum over and over and over and over for all of those five minutes.

Apparently, prior to the commencement of Laundry Day the iPod had been tucked in the pocket of a pair of his shorts.

I was fairly calm about the possible damage the dryer had done. It was the 30-minutes that the two-hundred-dollar-piece-of-anodized-metal had spent in the washing machine that I was going batshit about.

Was he in trouble.

When he got home from school, I simply said, “Jake, your iPod is dead.”

He looked kind of sick and said, “What do you mean?”

“You left it in the pocket of your cargo shorts and they got washed. The iPod is full of water. You can see it through the screen.”

“Mom, those shorts weren’t dirty. I only wore them for an hour last night and I left them over the back of my chair to put them on again after football practice tonight.”

Crap.

Not only was the iPod dead, but it was kinda sorta almost nearly possibly entirely my fault. I was sick. I mean, now I couldn’t smack him for it. Not justifiably anyway.

Then I remembered that, in the past, I had read encouraging stories about electronic gadgets that had been sprayed, sprinkled and/or immersed in water (and other various liquids–Rolling Rock comes to mind) and survived. The magic cure, it seemed, was to just let the darn thing dry out. And never, NEVER, EVer turn the sucker on until enough time had passed so as to assume thorough dryness. We figured three weeks was enough.

So yesterday after school, Jake and I proceeded to my closet where the iPod was safely nestled on a shelf between two sweaters. We took it down and immediately noticed the lack of water under the screen. We gasped. Jake pushed the select button to turn it on and we saw this:

Which means “Dude, your battery is totally drained.” We gasped again and plugged it into the charger. After about ten minutes, I pushed the select button and we saw this:

Allow me to introduce you to the “Sad iPod Icon.” Which means “OH CRAP, your hard drive is effed up. Game. over.” We groaned.

But, I wasn’t giving up. If I didn’t fix the iPod, I figured my only reasonable option would be to give him mine. And that so isn’t happening. So I did what I assume all red-blooded Americans do when they need help with a life-or-death situation like this.

I Googled.

Jake went upstairs.

I searched “sad ipod icon” and first read information about fixing the problem by forcing the iPod into disk mode. (I sound all technologically intelligent, but I have no idea what that means.) I followed the instructions word for word several times. No luck. Sad iPod continued to stare at me the way my two-year-old does when I eat the last oatmeal raisin cookie in front of her. [What?? She doesn't like raisins anyway.]

I began mentally preparing myself to chuck Jake’s Christmas present (from less than one year ago) into the trash. I felt ill. As I went to click on the red “X” that would close my Google window, I saw something funny. A search result with the words “spank your iPod” in it. Intrigued, I clicked. And, indeed, found a site called, what else, spankyouripod.com that offered the suggestion for fixing iPod hard drive problems by, yes, spanking the iPod.

But of COURSE. After all, it had been a bad, bad iPod.

What did I have to lose? I held Sad iPod in my left hand, face down, and gave a little smack with my right. Nothing. I repeated the process with a little harder smack. Again nothing. But I was enjoying getting to smack something over this deal. I put Sad iPod to my ear and heard whirring and clicking so I figured I hadn’t totally fried it yet. Or figured I had.

Finally, I took a deep breath, braced myself, and slammed Sad iPod down on my solid wood coffee table. Hard. My ears ringing from the slam!, I slowly looked down at the screen. Instead of the Sad iPod icon, I saw words. Ecstatic but hesitant, I inserted an earbud and, sure enough, heard Green Day cranking out “Extraordinary Girl.”

It was a miracle.

I yelled up to Jake, “Come get your iPod.”

“Did you fix it?”

“Duh. I knew I would.”

“Whatever.”

He snatched Happy iPod from my hand and went back up the stairs.

No “thank you.” No “good job.” Nothing.
Damn teenagers.
See if I fix the next thing of his that I break.