Sometimes iPods need a good spanking.

* The following is pulled from my September 2006 archives. *

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.

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 had finished washing the third or fourth load and tossed it into the dryer, started the dryer, and then went back to sitting on the couch eating bon-bons scrubbing toilets. After about five minutes 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 each and every one 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 surprisingly calm about the possible damage five minutes in the dryer had done. It was the thirty minutes that the two-hundred-dollar-piece-of-anodized-metal had spent in the washing machine that I was going apeshit about.

Man. Was Jake in trouble.

When he got home from school, I looked up from my People with one eyebrow raised and matter-of-factly 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,” I explained, my tone the epitome of I-knew-something-like-this-would-happen. “The iPod is full of water. You can see it through the screen.”

Jake’s voice became desperate, “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 damned thing dry out. And never, NEVER, EVer turn the power 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 had been safely nestled for three weeks on a shelf between two sweaters. We took it down and immediately noticed a lack of water under the screen. We gasped. Jake pushed the 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 power button and we saw this:

Allow me to introduce you to the “Sad iPod Icon.” Which means “Your iPod hard disk is TOAST. 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 was NOT 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 with 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 while the sick feeling in my stomach grew. And as I moved my mouse 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 disk problems by — yes, you got it — SPANKING THE IPOD.

BUT OF COURSE. After all, it had been a naughty, naughty iPod.

Nothing to lose, I held Sad iPod face down in my left hand 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 noises 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 but HARD.

My ears ringing from the SLAM!, I slowly looked down at the screen and instead of the Sad iPod icon I saw a song title and artist name. Ecstatic but skeptical, I inserted an earbud and sure enough heard Green Day cranking out “Extraordinary Girl.”

It was like a Christmas miracle.

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

“Did you fix it?” he asked incredulously.

“DUH. I knew I would,” I replied.

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

No “Thank you.” No “Good job, Mom.” Nothing.

Damn teenagers.

See if I fix the next thing of his that I break.