I’ve been a member of a very large running group for several years. A few times I’ve caught up to someone and initiated a conversation and was ignored because I didn’t see their earphones.

Though many runners like listening to music when they run, I’ve never gotten into it. I like music when driving a car, and I often seat-dance which makes my drive more enjoyable. But running with earphones would be bad because out of habit I might break into run-dancing which would look very especially utterly ridiculous.

Also, I haven’t made the leap from headphones to earphones. If I tried to wear the pair I have, they’d bounce right off. And I can’t upgrade because I’m locked into a service contract when I purchased the below headphones in 1998 that still has twelve years to go. Sounds unreasonably long, but the price was very highly attractive for a headset that combined phone, radio, streaming music and screenless TV that is now considered outdated technology. (I never figured out how the screenless TV function works.)

When I was in 7th grade, a kid called me Dumbo because of my oversized ears that stuck out. I don’t want a repeat of this. Wearing earphones could cause my ears to spread wider. This giganticism could cause my ears to gain the power to suck in anything put in them. I’d hate to walk around with a piece of cord or the corner of an iPod still sticking out after my ears sucked in the rest.