One Saturday night, I found myself looking up from the text message on my cellphone to the frail old woman in front of me; and it struck me—I just might have been given the wrong address.

Hearing the sounds of quiet conversation next door I headed over and knocked on the door. It was answered, and I saw a bunch of people sitting and talking over some wine at the table. The fireplace flicked and the mood seemed very somber. The person standing there shook his head. “Sorry, no, he doesn’t live here.”

A few houses over, I was ready to give up, when I heard something. The thump of bass, muted only by the brick wall it had traversed. Following the sound, as seeing the reversed “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” sign in the window, I was confident that I was in the right place. Barely a knock before the door opened and I was greeting by music and dancing and laughing. I was pulled into hugs and high-fives before everyone dispersed back to their social activities, and somehow through all of that confusion, I found myself already holding a glass of champagne and wearing a large smile.

It was a small, modest bungalow in Cap Hill. Cheap chairs surrounded a television which seemed to like to flicker the red component of its color on and off at random times. Christmas lights were strewn about to form the only décor and the wallpaper on the wall peeled. People drank wine from plastic cups while someone was drunkenly trying to demonstrate that he could break dance. He almost knocked over a girl who was hunched over what looked to be a large speaker. Avoiding the break dancing guy, she pouted right into the arms of her boyfriend, revealing what the large speaker was.

The smile from my face faded when I saw the setup—an iPod Hi-Fi surrounded by about six or seven iPods from every generation, ranging from iPod color to iPhone. The pouting girl finished the playlist she was making and replaced the 160 GB Classic with her red Nano and on came Bon Jovi blaring through the speakers. The floor rumbled and groaned as everyone at the party jumped and danced, arms in the air, and a dozen voices yelled “SHOT THROUGH THE HEART!!” in unison to the lyrics.

I was broken from my reverie when my friend, the birthday boy, introduced me to an attractive girl while giving me a smirk that indicated his design for me to flirt with her. He mentioned that I worked on a cool new MP3 player called Zune. She had never heard of it. I explained to her that it was a media player that Microsoft had made, trying to bring great music listening experiences to people like her. She stared blankly at me, until I conceded. “It’s like an iPod, but much cooler.”

Her eyes lit up with recognition and she demanded to see one. I shyly pulled out a red Zune and handed it to her. “Wow, it’s classy,” she exclaimed, as her lips widened slowly into a pretty smile. She played around with it for a couple of minutes, demoing me the cool things she saw as if I had never used a Zune before. Then she saw a song by The Shins that she liked, and without hesitation, turned around and tried to put it on the iPod Hi-Fi.

As she struggled to get it to work with the iPod dock, I found myself smiling again.