apple store
This will not be one of our typical posts so those of you who only look at the pictures and don’t read any of the text (Erin, McGranny, I’m looking at you) can feel free to come back later tonight. :)
Last evening Nora and I set off alone to reclaim my newly-repaired macbook from the Apple store. I got an entirely new logicboard because of a defective $2.00 headphone jack (linguists need headphone jacks, people with macbooks need AppleCare). Nora happily said, “hello!” to each of the iphones individually but stopped dead in her tracks in front of a mac pro with a giant LCD monitor. Actually, ‘monitor’ doesn’t really do it justice. It was too large to be a large screen television. You’d need to reinforce your desk. I think Times Square has a large bare patch on one of its buildings. She stopped in front of this monstrosity, raised her finger to point at it and with awe in her voice called out ‘apple!’ very loudly*.
Want the secret to receiving great customer service? Bring along an enthusiastic toddler who’ll stand in the middle of the store and dance & sing the name of the product the sales folks are trying to get others to buy.
On the way out of the store (after the best customer service of my life) Nora pointed at the GIANT screen again and this time yelled ‘bubble!’. Watching herself in the Hands-On Museum bubble video we posted has become her favorite pastime. She made me show it 3 times during lunch today alone (the highest I’ve let it go in a sitting was 18 times — she’s watched it twice while I’ve been typing this). So I pulled up her blog on the giant screen (my HTML layout looks just silly when the resolution is most efficiently given in scientific notation) and, without even considering that the giant screen might secretly be connected to similarly giant speakers, pressed play.
It was fantastic. There was a 7/10 life-size scaled Nora dancing, enjoying the giant bubble maker, and yelling so loudly that everyone in the (already dangerously loud) store turned to look. I didn’t turn it down. The place is supposed to be loud, right? Apple wants people to buy speakers so they hook up giant speakers and let people do more or less whatever they want with them, right? And home video of one’s kids has to be responsible for at least as many high-end computer purchases as Portal and Half-Life, right?
Then I witnessed the unimaginable. Nora wasn’t watching bubble. She was clinging to my side and staring around the store at all of the other people and, I swear, trying to disassociate herself from the situation! I managed to embarrass a toddler!?!? I’m going to be good at embarrassing a ‘tween. I hope there is a contest.
(now she’s watched bubble 5 times while posting this)
* she has no idea about the brand. she saw the apple logo, it’s an apple, she’s terribly fond of apples. later at the grocery store she did the exact same thing when I pushed our cart next to the bin of apples, but that time she stopped saying it because she had snatched a Fuji for herself and her mouth was full of apple.