Don't Turn Around-uh-uh-oh!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the next great thing in marriage enrichment . . . introducing tandem synchronized iPod shuffle-ing!

Many evenings Trisha and I will go for a walk. When we go, we usually both will listen to our respective iPods. That is to say that we'll walk together but she'll listen to her music and I'll listen to mine. I had expressed the following idea before, but someone I love declared, "That's impossible!" Two evenings ago, I brought it up again, and this time the notion intrigued the social scientist side of my wife's personality. I unpacked a plan for us to listen to the same songs at the same time while using two separate machines. The alternative was to use only 1 iPod and share the earbuds.

Step One. Compile a playlist. We actually had a playlist draft to pick songs that we each would want to hear . . . "Mr. Commissioner, with the second pick of the fourth round, the man's iPod chooses 'Fergalicious'!"

Step Two. Sync your iPod's. You have to make sure that the playlist is in the order you want. Be careful when you sync the second iPod. Our computer wanted to put the second sync in order by artist's name. Something we discovered the second song into our walk.

Step Three. Set the iPods to play songs in order. "Shuffle" will have you out of sync.

Step Four. Start the iPods simultaneously. We actually had that Lethal Weapon moment the first time we tried it. "You mean 1-2-3 and then shoot or 1-2 then shoot on 3?" The solution was to have one person hit both start buttons. It helps here to listen to one earbud from each iPod.

Step Five. Be sure to lip sync or even sing to each other. It's fun, and, of course, nothing will freak out your neighbors more than seeing the two of you bounding up to them with your white earbuds in and all of a sudden declaring in unison "Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?"

The Future? Since this is a new phenomenon for us, I can't push this too far or too fast lest we crash and burn. I thnk we need to add "The Electric Slide" to the playlist just so one day passers by will see us dancing, to apparently no music, in the post office parking lot.