Just when I thought I had it all—the Apple trifecta (iPod, iPad, iPhone), plus a handful of tiny MP3 players, a Bluetooth speaker and a talking car, along comes somebody to give me yet another gadget to keep charged.
We’re now deep into February, when parking spaces are beginning to open up again at the rec center. Those New Year’s resolutions only last so long. And so one’s body, fit and flexible for about a January nanosecond, is already beginning to deteriorate. At least mine tends to go that way. Except now I have permanent motivation in the form of a sports band.
Unless you’re in training for the Olympics or something more energetic, you may not even know that there is such a thing as a sports band. I didn’t, either, until I opened one up on Christmas morning. Ever the gadget geek, I was immediately fascinated. Put this rubberized plastic thingie on your wrist and it keeps track of a whole bunch of activities, like moving. And that’s good because I often have a prolonged disagreement between my physical and spiritual selves over which one is willing and which is weak on any given day. Most of the time, of course, there’s no real contest, so my body, which prefers being at rest, tends to remain at rest.
Now, however, I have a motivator. How can I resist when a flashing light at the end of my arm keeps saying GOMARYGOMARYGOMARYGOMARY! I can’t just ignore something that personal and that urgent, can I? Plus, the accompanying app on my iPhone sends me a message to “get up and move for 5 minutes for the win.” I like winning. I like it even over and above being at rest, so if I happen to be where it’s convenient, I get up and walk, delighted when my band tells me that I’ve won an hour. Don’t ask because I don’t know an hour of what. No matter. Winning isn’t everything, as they say, it’s the only thing. But I wish I could win new carpeting for the house because I’m wearing a path through the kitchen, dining room, living room, hallway and bedroom.
Okay, so it’s a glorified pedometer. It just happens to be the only pedometer that I’ve had that’s actually worked. But while it’s water resistant, it’s not waterproof, so I can’t use it to count swimming strokes. And it also doesn’t count much movement when I do the Nautilus circuit. Brushing my teeth? Yes. I do get credit for that, and, in fact, just waving my arm. Oh, and something else! It actually tells the time, too! Now I have two watches. Plus that Apple trifecta. I definitely have no excuse for being late anymore.
It’s almost unimaginable how the world got along before we had all these gizmos. I mean, Noah probably didn’t have a tide table app when he was piloting the arc. Marco Polo didn’t buy oregano from Amazon.com. People had to go to the library to borrow a book and nobody even knew what a Duck Dynasty was. On the other hand, nobody had Facebook, either. Ah, progress.
I was going to expound further on the benefits (or not) of my sports band, but I’ve been sitting here at the computer for a while now and it’s calling me. It really is.
GOMARYGOMARYGOMARYGOMARYGOMARY. . . . . . .
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