How to Lose $80 at 80+ — or Maybe Not

APPLE TECHNOLOGY 101: YOU’RE NEVER TOO OLD TO LEARN. I PROMISE

Photo by Aaina Sharma on Unsplash

Lesson one: Never remove an earbud without immediately putting it into its little happy case. 

Oh, you already failed that one? You must be over 50. Somewhere in Never-Never Land is a football field paved with lost earbuds. That’s where they go when you think you put one in your pocket. Everyone under 50 has a secret safe place for temporarily-removed earbuds. It’s in their genetic make-up.

Lesson two: Never buy anything in an Apple store. Apple stores are where you go to take classes on how to use Apple stuff you buy at Target. The Apple people don’t care; they made their money selling stuff to Target where their stuff is wayyy cheaper. Six-year-olds know this.

Lesson three: Don’t go thinking you can pick up an orphan earbud (cheap) just because you still have its lonesome mate and little happy case. Everybody under 40 knows you just toss the abandoned mate and case, because they didn’t grow up in the Depression when you were taught never to throw anything away. (They worry about the environment just as you do, but there is a technological environmental disconnect.)

Lesson four: If you failed Lesson Three, do not pay the smiling Apple person $80 for a right earbud she swears will happily pair with your lonesome left earbud. She lies. She does not mean to lie; she is simply under 30 and can’t imagine anyone would still have a Gen One AirPod. Only someone over 80 would still have a Gen One anything.

Lesson five: Once you fail Lessons Two through Four, do not obsess over the fact that no amount of following the instructions will make your $80 right earbud work. Because:

Lesson six: “Gen” as in “Generation” does not refer to your grandchildren. Anybody under 90 knows that “Gen” = a step in production. You won’t find this in the OED, but nobody under 70 ever heard of the OED. (Oxford English Dictionary, the bible of semantics before Google invented search engines.) Anyway, obsessing over all this is bad for your blood pressure.

Lesson six (cont’d): Apple AirPods Gen One came out in 2016. Only someone in her 90s — well, maybe 80s — would be so gauche as to still have a Gen One AirPod. Most people still owning a Gen Two (b 2019) would hang their heads in shame before admitting to such a thing. Gen 3? Reputable, although now there’s Gen 4 and while you read this they are busily at work on Gen 5. Everybody under 20 now has the Gen 4 (debuting in September) on order if not in ear.

Lesson seven: Do not think, just because you paid them $80 three days ago, that the Apple people will cut you any slack. They will “run diagnostics” — something understood by anyone under 30 to mean a mysterious technological study and by everyone over 60 to mean “I’m slipping behind that white door for a cup of coffee while you stare into space for 10 minutes.” The diagnostics will reveal you to be the owner of a Gen One and you will need to slink out of the store in disgrace. Empty-handed.

Lesson eight: But listen to the smiling Apple Genius person as he hands you back your worthless stuff. He is giving you good advice. He is saying, softly, “Just go to Target and get a new pair.”

Congratulations on your graduation.