Left vs Right

Hoi-en picked me up from the airport on Friday night, and her iPod charger, necessary to get the music out of the battery-dead iPod and into our ears via the car stereo, was declining to perform its sole task in life. "Jiggle the cable," she advised, so I wiggled bits of the cable here and there, and reconnected the ends. "No, like this," she said, and proceeded to give the end of the cable plugged into the cigarette lighter a vigourous hand job. Still no go, and I was certain that the cable was indeed completely dead, because who or what wouldn't wake up for something like that?

"Unplug everything and put it back into the glove compartment." I stared at her uncomprehendingly. Seeing my disbelief, she asked, "Don't you ever do that? Like when the car won't start and you get out and then get back in again." I blinked. No, actually, I've never, ever done such a thing. Clearly all the jiggling in the world wasn't accomplishing anything, though, so I conceded and put the iPod, cable and charger back in the glove compartment, and we chatted for a while.

A bit later I remembered the iPod and pulled all the bits out, connected them, and everything worked just fine. Clearly I know nothing at all about technology...