If I Keep Losing My AirPods, I Might Lose Sean

On lost AirPods, shopping-cart ethics, becoming invisible at a customer service counter, and the sausage and mushroom Marsala pasta that came afterward.

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It is 10 PM in the Hannaford parking lot and I am walking around with the flashlight on my phone, frantically searching the pavement.

The parking lot is almost completely empty.

Almost.

There is one other car. A man, probably about my age, is standing beside it writing on a clipboard against his open back passenger window. I don't know why. His window is open, which seems to defeat at least part of the purpose of using it as a writing surface. The whole thing feels uncomfortable.

But not nearly as uncomfortable as looking up every few minutes and seeing Sean and Ethan staring at me through the windshield of our car.

Neither of them is helping.

They are just watching.

I have lost my AirPod.

Again.

To be fair, this is probably the sixth AirPod I have lost in a row.

Sean is quite literally beside himself at this point.

Sean has a favorite saying when I do something that he believes could have been avoided through better judgment:

"Let that be a lesson to you."

I hear it constantly.

Burn my hand because I grabbed something I knew was hot?

"Let that be a lesson to you."

Leave something at home and have to turn the truck around?

"Let that be a lesson to you."

Make virtually any decision that produces a consequence Sean could have predicted?

"Let that be a lesson to you."

It is never actually a lesson to me.

This is one of the fundamental differences in our relationship. Sean believes that when something goes wrong, you should examine what happened, learn from the experience, and modify your behavior so it doesn't happen again.

I believe things happen.

And right now, Sean is sitting in the car watching me crawl around the Hannaford parking lot at 10 o'clock at night looking for my sixth lost AirPod.

So I already know what's coming.

"Let that be a lesson to you."

It won't be.

I Have a Problem

I love my AirPods.

I wear them approximately 22.5 hours per day.

I fall asleep with them in my ears. Before I get into the shower, I instinctively flick both of my earlobes to make sure there isn't an AirPod still attached to my head before I let the water hit me.

I realize this is becoming a problem.

But I'm always doing something. I'm on a call. I'm listening to a podcast. I'm listening to an audiobook. I'm watching Gilmore Girls. I'm watching a Roseanne rerun I've already seen 14 times.

AirPods are not an accessory.

They are my religion.

The problem is that I keep losing them.

Usually they eventually turn up. Under a sofa cushion. Under the seat of my truck. Buried somewhere in the mattress of our bed.

Once, about two years ago, I lost a pair while I was working in our office in Chicago.

The building has 57 floors.

I knew those AirPods were gone.

So I did what any reasonable person would do. I walked from my hotel to Target and bought another pair because there was simply no scenario in which I was going to survive the rest of the trip, and particularly the flight home, without them.

Sean would argue that this was an early opportunity to learn some sort of lesson.

I don't remember what it was.

The Toilet Incident

Recently, I got up one morning to use the bathroom.

Sean had just gotten out of the shower and was standing in front of the mirror getting ready for the day.

I sat down on the toilet.

Plop.

I cocked my head to the side.

What was that?

At exactly the same moment, Sean spun around.

"Ew, Brad. What was that?"

I was equally concerned.

What could possibly have fallen out of me?

I had just sat down.

I stood up and looked.

There, at the bottom of an otherwise completely empty toilet bowl, was my AirPod.

There are moments in a relationship when words aren't necessary.

Sean looked at me.

I looked at Sean.

We both looked into the toilet.

Then Sean looked back at me.

"Let that be a lesson to you."

I don't know what the lesson was supposed to be.

Don't wear AirPods on the toilet?

Don't have ears?

Whatever it was, four weeks later I finally broke down and bought another pair.

And I was going to be more careful with these.

Obviously.

The Hannaford Incident

I hadn't even had the new AirPods for two weeks.

Then one night, the three of us watched a horrible scary movie.

I don't remember what the movie was about and it doesn't matter. What matters is that when it ended, I went upstairs terrified.

I needed something comforting.

Something familiar.

Something that would make me forget whatever demonic horror Ethan had just made me watch.

I needed Gilmore Girls.

I reached for my AirPods.

Left AirPod.

No right AirPod.

I checked the case.

I checked my pockets.

I checked the bed.

I checked under the bed.

Nothing.

So I opened Find My.

Hannaford.

Absolutely not.

I went downstairs.

"We have to go to Hannaford."

Sean looked at me.

It was 10 o'clock at night.

Ethan was already in bed.

"We have to go now."

And this is how losing an AirPod became a family field trip.

We got into the car and drove to Hannaford.

I retraced my steps.

I searched the parking lot.

I shined the flashlight on my phone under cars.

I inspected cracks.

I looked around the cart corrals.

Nothing.

Eventually Sean and Ethan retreated to the car, where they sat watching me continue the search with the expressions of two people reconsidering every decision that had brought them to this particular family.

Which brings us back to me, the man with the clipboard, and the empty parking lot.

Every few minutes I'd look toward our car.

Two faces behind the windshield.

Watching.

Judging.

I never found the AirPod.

Eventually I admitted defeat.

For the night.

Lost and Found

At 6:30 the next morning, I was back at Hannaford.

I stood at the customer service counter waiting for the woman working there to come over.

She was standing in a huddle with two coworkers.

They all saw me.

One looked at me.

Then another looked at me.

Then the first one looked at me again.

Nobody came over.

I stood there.

Is this what happens when you turn 40?

Do you just become invisible?

I'm right here.

There was no urgency.

No concern.

Eventually, after what felt like six minutes, she made her way over.

I explained that I had lost an AirPod and Find My was showing that I had left it at Hannaford.

She sighed and pulled out a plastic bin of lost possessions.

Then she began rummaging.

Gloves.

Sunglasses.

Lighters.

Headbands.

Cigarette cases.

She was pulling out fistfuls of people's abandoned lives and throwing them onto the counter.

I pulled out my AirPod case and showed her the AirPod I still had.

"So it looks like this."

She looked at me without responding.

The look said:

Sir. I know what an AirPod is.

"Wow," I said, watching another pile of sunglasses hit the counter. "People leave a lot of stuff."

"Oh, and they'll never come back for it."

Then she aggressively pointed over her shoulder toward one of the women she'd been talking to.

"But SHE thinks we have to keep everything forever because SOMEDAY they're going to come back for it."

I chortled softly because I didn't know what else to do.

I mean, I was standing right there.

I had come back for it.

We reached the bottom of the bin.

No AirPod.

At this point the entire interaction had become so uncomfortable that I desperately wanted to escape.

"Well, thank you so much for looking."

"Oh, no. There's another bin."

I grimaced.

Of course there was another bin.

She disappeared and returned with an even larger container.

Lost and Found: Volume II.

More gloves.

More sunglasses.

More random possessions people had apparently decided they could live without.

I stood there silently while she excavated the entire thing.

We reached the bottom.

No AirPod.

This time I successfully thanked her and escaped.

But on my way toward the door, I remembered something.

The shopping cart.

The Shopping Cart Theory

I always return my shopping cart.

I actually believe returning a shopping cart may be one of the last available tests of whether a person belongs in civilized society.

There is no punishment for not doing it.

The police aren't coming.

You're not getting a ticket.

Nobody is going to arrest you because you abandoned your Hannaford cart three parking spaces away from the corral.

You return it because another human being has to deal with it if you don't.

And if you are physically capable of walking 30 feet and simply choose not to, I don't know what to tell you.

The day before, I'd only bought one bag of groceries, so instead of taking the cart outside, I'd returned it to the cart area inside the store.

The cart bay had been almost completely empty.

I remember walking all the way to the back and pushing my cart neatly into the two carts that were there.

I probably mentally congratulated myself.

Good person.

And suddenly, standing near the exit at 6:30 in the morning, I knew.

The AirPod had fallen out of my ear when I returned the cart.

It was under the shopping carts.

There was only one problem.

Hannaford had restocked them overnight.

The cart bay was now completely full.

So I got down on all fours.

I turned on the flashlight on my phone.

I started shining it underneath the carts.

Then I got lower.

And lower.

Eventually I was practically belly-down on the brick floor of Hannaford at 6:30 in the morning trying to see beneath approximately 400 shopping-cart wheels.

Nothing.

So I started pulling carts out.

One.

Two.

Five.

Ten.

Then I squeezed myself between them to get a better look.

And got stuck.

At 6:30 in the morning, I am now wedged between two rows of shopping carts at Hannaford, pushing and squeezing and trying to free myself while people walk into the store and stare at me.

They probably thought I was certifiably insane.

Perhaps they were right.

But I just wanted my AirPod.

I eventually freed myself.

I never found it.

Let That Be a Lesson to You

Losing another AirPod has given Sean something incredibly valuable.

Leverage.

It doesn't matter what we're talking about anymore. My AirPod can and will be introduced as evidence against me.

"I think we should eat at home tonight and save some money. We have Quebec coming up."

"YOU LOST YOUR AIRPOD AND HAD TO SPEND $300 ON A NEW PAIR."

It was $240.

I'm not going to argue with him.

"Let that be a lesson to you."

Or:

"Sean, maybe we skip brunch this morning and go kayaking."

"Well, I didn't lose my AirPods and have to spend money again."

Let that be a lesson to me.

Or:

"Sean, can I borrow your AirPods for this call?"

"I didn't lose my AirPods. I always know where mine are."

Let that be a lesson to me.

The other day we were taking a walk together.

"Sean, let's actually talk to each other. Let's try that TikTok thing where couples go for a walk and don't listen to anything."

"I can't think of what that is."

"You're not punishing me."

"I didn't lose my AirPods."

Let that be a lesson to me.

This is my life now.

Nearly 13 years together and Sean has finally found the perfect response to every argument I will ever make.

I lost an AirPod.

Again.

And I have no defense.

At Least I Know Where the Sausage Is

So this is my life now.

I'm missing an AirPod. Sean has acquired a devastating new piece of evidence he can introduce into any disagreement for the foreseeable future. And I've spent part of my morning on all fours inside a Hannaford shopping cart corral.

There was really only one thing left to do.

Make dinner.

Fortunately, I had a pound of sweet Italian sausage in the refrigerator.

And unlike my AirPod, I knew exactly where it was.

I also had mushrooms and Parmesan, and I'd picked up shallots, cream and a bottle of Marsala.

The plan was Sausage & Mushroom Marsala Pasta: sweet Italian sausage and deeply browned mushrooms with wide ribbons of pasta in a creamy Marsala pan sauce.

This is exactly the sort of dinner I want Gay Housekeeping to be about.

Nothing in it is particularly difficult.

Nothing requires you to spend six hours making your own stock or order an ingredient harvested by monks.

It's sausage and mushrooms and pasta.

But we're going to treat them with some respect.

You Have to Actually Brown the Mushrooms

There is an epidemic of gray mushrooms in this country.

We put mushrooms into a crowded skillet, immediately start stirring them around, watch them release a gallon of water and then wonder why they taste like damp little kitchen sponges.

We're not doing that.

Get a big skillet hot. Add your mushrooms with a little olive oil, spread them out and leave them alone.

They will release water.

This is not an emergency.

Keep cooking.

The water will disappear. The sizzling will change. And eventually the mushrooms will start making actual contact with the hot pan.

That's when this happens:

That is a mushroom.

Brown edges. Concentrated flavor. A little butter at the end.

Take them out of the skillet and try not to eat half of them while you make everything else.

Then the Sausage

The sweet Italian sausage goes directly into the same pan.

And yes, removing sausage from its casing always produces something that looks deeply unpromising.

Have faith.

Break it up, but don't obliterate it into tiny pebbles. I want pieces of sausage in the finished pasta that you can actually find.

More importantly, let it brown.

We're doing the same thing we did with the mushrooms.

Color is flavor.

Everything sticking to the bottom of that stainless-steel skillet is going to become part of our sauce.

This is why I love cooking something like this in stainless steel.

All those browned bits that look like you've made a mess are basically a savings account we're about to cash.

Remove the sausage and add it to the mushrooms.

Do not clean the skillet.

For the love of God, do not clean the skillet.

About the Marsala

Marsala is a fortified wine from Sicily, and it comes in two basic personalities: sweet and dry.

For a savory sauce like this one, you want dry.

If at all possible, buy an actual bottle from the wine aisle rather than the "cooking wine" shelved next to the vinegar, which has been salted into submission.

There was only one small problem.

I couldn't remember whether the bottle I'd bought was sweet or dry.

I examined the label.

Unhelpful.

I turned the bottle around.

Still unclear.

There was really only one responsible culinary solution.

Research.

For the recipe.

I would like the record to reflect that I wasn't standing in my kitchen drinking wine directly from the bottle in the middle of making dinner.

I was determining its residual sugar content.

This is called being thorough.

And before anyone asks why I didn't pour it into a glass, that would have created another dish.

I'm trying to save money.

I have AirPods to buy.

What we want from the Marsala is nutty, caramelized depth. The cream and the Parmesan are already handling rich. The Marsala's job is to make the sauce taste like it has a past, not to make dinner taste like dessert took a wrong turn.

Build the Sauce in the Mess

The diced shallot goes directly into the skillet, straight into the rendered sausage fat and all of that glorious fond. If the pan looks dry, this is where the second tablespoon of butter goes in.

Let the shallot soften for a couple of minutes, then add the garlic for about 30 seconds.

Then the Marsala.

The wine hits the hot pan and immediately starts loosening every browned bit the sausage and mushrooms left behind. Scrape it all up. This is the savings account, cashed.

Let the Marsala reduce by about half.

Then add the chicken stock and the cream.

At this point you may look into the skillet and think:

This seems awfully thin.

Good.

Because we aren't finished.

The pasta is going into this skillet.

Parmesan is going into this skillet.

Starchy pasta water is going into this skillet.

The sauce is going to reduce while all of that happens.

If you make it perfectly thick now, you'll have wallpaper paste by the time dinner reaches the table.

The Part Where It Becomes Dinner

The sausage and mushrooms go back into the skillet.

Then the pasta, cooked just shy of al dente, goes in with them.

Toss everything together. Turn the heat down and add the Parmesan gradually, tossing the whole time, with splashes of the reserved pasta water as you go. Keep tossing. Finish with most of the parsley.

This is where you stop blindly following measurements and start looking at your food.

Does the sauce cling to the pasta?

Does it look glossy?

Can you pick up a ribbon of pasta and see sauce coating it rather than running off?

If it's tight, add pasta water.

If it's loose, keep tossing it over the heat.

And suddenly the pile of raw sausage that looked vaguely obscene 20 minutes ago has become this:

This is why we stay home for dinner.

Not because we're being punished.

Not because someone lost an AirPod and apparently needs to demonstrate fiscal responsibility.

Because sometimes the thing you make at home is better than what you were going to go out and buy anyway.

Although I'm sure Sean would like me to acknowledge that it is also considerably cheaper.

Fine.

Let that be a lesson to me.