Emily DuBose, Junior, English, Austin, TX
Over the summer, I lost my Air pods. I know, poor little me! There are millions of people that can’t even afford them, and I have the audacity to lose them? This fact was the very reason that I was so distressed. The guilt of my ignorance was a living thing that attacked me at random moments. I was especially contrite because I had already broken my watch earlier in the year. The lost Air pods were the icing on the top of my cake of carelessness.
It’s not like I haven’t lost things before. Pens, water bottles, clothes, my phone, my phone’s charger, my glasses. All have gone missing. Some have turned up. These are just the little things, everyday losses that we don’t really think about. We assume they’ll turn up eventually, or we buy replacements, leaving the lost item at the mercy of the unpredictable universe. No big deal. Except for that time, I lost my favorite pen in the fifth grade. I will never forget about the lovely purple gel pen that survived moving to a new school but couldn’t survive the greedy hands of mischievous eleven-year-olds.
But the case of the missing Air pods plagued me for months – and made me increasingly nervous as the school year approached since I would be leaving my lost Air pods a four-hour drive away. For illogical reasons, I delayed packing for school because of the absence of my Air pods – I believed that I could not start packing until I found them. I typically reserve my summers for reading, so I don’t use my Air pods as much as I do during the school year when I need a break from books and turn to TV. Because using my headphones and returning to school were tied so closely in my brain, I felt that school would not start until I found them, as if the entirety of TCU would halt its back-to-school preparation and come down to Austin to help me find my Air pods. School simply could not start until I was ready.
My anxiety grew until the day before I had to leave. I had looked through all my bags and drawers, but the root cause of the loss was that I could not pinpoint the last time I used or even saw my Air pods. I would sit in my room, watching the empty space where my headphones usually sat, waiting for them to drop out of thin air so I could happily pack them in my suitcase.
My parents have an explanation for when things go missing or seem to have moved places on their own – the ‘minute men’ have come in the night and changed things up just to mess with us. They are too small and too quick to catch, so they have the liberty to do whatever they want. It felt like a little minute man came into my room and stole my Air pods because he knew that I wouldn’t use them until August. “These are wasted on you,” he taunts. “You’ll get them back only when you deserve them!”
The morning of the day I was to move back to college, I gave up. As much as I tried to look, the missing headphones would not turn up. I resigned myself to having no headphones – or at least just my old headphones – until I came back for fall break (when I guess they would magically appear). I speed-packed my entire room in the morning, throwing clothes and knick-knacks into random bags, stopping only to stare mournfully at the pocket that normally holds my Air pods. I drove with my family to Fort Worth, and in the madness of move-in, I forgot all about my Air pods. My family and I set up and decorated my new room, and I went with them to the hotel where they were staying for the night. I took with me a carry-on-sized bag with clothes for one evening. I tossed my suitcase on the bed and was instantly accosted by my sister.
“You better have brought your swimsuit because we’re going to the pool.”
“I know, I know. I brought it.” It’s a tradition: we always go to the hotel pool no matter how late it is. Or how tired I am. I trudged over to unzip and flip open my suitcase, expecting to find my rarely worn bathing suit, but what do I find? Right there, all sweet and innocent? My AIR PODS! Placed in the perfect center of my suitcase as if with great care, when I know – I KNOW – I did not pack them. Shocked, I stared into my suitcase, waiting for it to open its jaws and eat me where I stood, for I certainly had entered a distorted dream. The minuteman was laughing at me now. He knows I didn’t see this coming. I stared at the bright purple case of my Air pods, thinking, minute men must really be real because I am absolutely certain that I did not pack my Air pods.
“What are you waiting for? Your swimsuit isn’t gonna jump out for you.” My impatient sister couldn’t understand why I was just standing there.
“Did you…did you pack my Air pods? Is this a joke?” I was the victim of many pranks and jokes that my 13-year-old sister thought were hilarious.
“No? Why would I hide them in your own suitcase? That would be a bad prank.” Despite her tendency for mischief, I believed her.
I looked at her. “Then minutemen are real.” She rolled her eyes.
Later, my parents relayed to me a much more likely conclusion: at the end of our last trip to Dallas, my Air pods got stuck in a crack in my suitcase that I did not thoroughly check when I searched it earlier. They just made a reappearance after I carelessly tossed my suitcase onto the bed. To quote the Harry Potter character Luna Lovegood, “things have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.” Logically I know my parents’ version of events is likely true, but I really want to believe that there are little mystical forces causing trouble in our lives before they set it right again.
The minutemen live in the shadows and laugh at our misfortune. They watch as we desperately search for car keys when we’re late to work and smile to themselves, holding the keys we need so very much. They snicker when they hear us say, “I could have sworn I put them right here….” They laugh at our bewildered expressions when the phone we set on the table now lies on the couch. The minutemen never create too much damage, just enough to cause confusion. I like to think that they are the reason for my inexplicable discrepancies in memory. However, I can’t say I’m in a hurry to be the punchline of a cosmic joke again anytime soon.