iPod, I Name Thee Lazarus

One of the perks of writing a trivial blog filled with drivel is that I can fact-check extremely mundane details from my life; for example, I know for certain that I bought my iPod Nano in April of 2008 and I made a habit of swimming with this iPod in November of 2008 (which didn't last long, as my supposedly waterproof Otterbox case leaked, resulting in a waterlogged and broken iPod . . . but one of my well-connected students set me up with an "appointment" with her ex-boyfriend at the Apple Store and he gave me a new one, despite the fact that water damage is NOT covered by the limited warranty) and then I used the new iPod-- an exact clone of the old iPod-- without incident for many years, until I lost it for several months in the winter of 2013, and now I am realizing that this particular iPod (which I have conflated with the original water-damaged iPod in a philosophical leap reminiscent of the Ship of Theseus dilemma) is imbued with miraculous qualities, because my wife's iPod -- a newer, sleeker model-- doesn't hold a charge and gives her loads of problems, but this model (like my Jeep) is built to last, possibly to infinity and beyond; to make a long story short, Tuesday morning, when I got in my car to go to work, I saw my iPod lying prostrate in the road . . . it must have fallen out of my gym bag, and so it spent the night on the pavement, getting soaked by several rainstorms and quite possibly run over by cars, and so I assumed this was finally the end -- R.I.P iPod-- but when I pressed the "play" symbol, the screen popped right up, and so I put it in a bowl of dry rice and it is now in good working order-- and this tempts me to to try other more extreme experiments on the device: fire, acid, ice, my digestive system . . . but perhaps I shouldn't tempt fate, as I'm sure I will place it in peril some time soon, without forcing the issue.