What Am I Missing?

For Christmas, I was given the stellar match-up of the iRiver iFP-899 MP3 player and Shure's exceptional e2C earbuds. The earbuds are the noise isolating variety, which means they block out the sound instead of employing some weird technology to try to cover it up electronically.

Well, they work, and they sound incredible. I wanted an MP3 player so I could fill up the time I spend walking and riding the bus with music, news and information, since I get sick reading and moving at the same time. Trying it out for the first time today, I'm not so sure it is for me.

I immediately realized what I was missing and felt like that isolationist "look straight ahead and aknowledge nobody" guy you see wandering around with a scared look on his face. While only about half of bus stop waits result in conversations with the other riders, jamming the phones in my ears gave the clear signal that I didn't want to talk. I completely lost that opportunity. While such things are usually idle small talk, I've often had some nice chats.

Getting on the bus, I felt compelled to pop the buds out to greet the driver. I always go out of the way to be nice to drivers. If I said something, I'd have no concept of how loud it was with the phones in my ears.

Conversations on the bus? Nada. I couldn't hear a thing, so no more amusement from the random stuff on the bus. Sure, 70% of the time the bus is people sitting quietly, but I'll miss the exceptions.

This is going to take some getting used to. I'm most certainly going to use it in moderation. The music from the combo of these top notch trinkets can't always top the sounds of the experience I call "going home".