If you saw the scene in a movie, you would have laughed. At the time though, I didn’t think it was that funny.

Walking across the kitchen with a full cup of very hot coffee, I was plugged into the latest downloaded Podcasts. Arriving at the door to our front porch, I was just reaching for the doorknob when my dangling headphone cables were attacked by a passing chair. Instead of conveniently popping out, the ear buds maintained their positions like a Republican in Iraq. In a second, my casual stroll became a cluster-bomb assault on a quiet morning. It took me half an hour to repair the damage to coffee, door, walls, table, chairs and floor.
A less reasonable man would have cursed the phones, Steve Jobs or Ceyote, the godlet of pratfalls. But I’m rational enough to know about the Cleat Principle; whatever dangles will get tangled, but only if the result is disastrous or seriously inconvenient.

Another example occured just the other day as I was walking Ulu the Border Collie in a nearby park. We had just arrived so she was still in pre-exercise hyperactive mode restrained by only her short leather leash. Of course I was listening to “IT Conversations” or ABC’s “All in the Mind” at the time. A cute little English Sheepdog had run up, wagged it’s butt and begged to be petted. As the puppy wasn’t a Frisbee, Ulu was over it and straining at her leash towards something somewhere else.

That’s when my headphones leapt into the Sheepdog’s mouth to become hopelessly tangled among her tiny teeth leaving me bent over with 60 pounds of Collie attached to my hand, going one way, and 20 pounds of puppy lashed to my head going in the other. Fortunately, the animals, people, victim and devices all survived, though the puppy’s owner almost killed herself trying not fall over laughing.

In case you missed it, the ‘Cleat Principle’ states; “Anything that can get tangled will, but only if the results will be painful, dangerous, inconvenient or embarrassing.”

So it was with relief that I ran across an announcement that heralds the first response to this scourge; The Mueva Wraptor from Mophie. Morphie seems to have some secret software or a chained dwarf that comes to come up with excessively cute product names, but we’ll overlook that for now.

“That sweet new shuffle is clipped on and you’re ready to rock and roll. Just don’t tell that to those earphones you’re dragging behind. Put a stop to the drags, dangles and tangles with the Wraptor. Precision engineered grooves spool those earbud wires nice and tight - you’ll never get them caught in the door again. Add that to the crystal clear composite Lexan that protects your Shuffle from the bump and grind, and this Wraptor is the new king of the urban jungle.”  
(The same dwarf must write their ad copy)

With the Wraptor, you can tuck the excess cable around the slick little transparent case and perhaps prevent yourself from falling victim to aggressive doorknobs or puppy dogs. I suggest that we all contact the company and request that they create a version for the iPod Nano and the iPod Classic before any more damage is done.

Find out more about it at: http://www.mophie.com/muevawraptor.html