i wonder if anyone else has the same luck as me when it comes to headphones. it seems like I'm always buying new ones. since the days of Walkmans, i was always looking for that perfect pair that would cost enough to ensure that it was actually a working pair, but not too much that I'd be wasting money, because inevitably they got stepped, crushed, left on a bus somewhere, or thrown out. even once i bought my ipod i was still cursed to continue hunting for headphones forever. the apple headphones are not very comfortable, especially when you go to sleep wearing them. i had to hide them from the pillaging hands of brother2 who never seemed to be able to hang onto his own headphones-I'm going to interject a completely different thought here; don't all ipods come with the cord to connect it to a computer? so why does mine always disappear, only to reappear in a different room in the house, connected to a strange ipod? and why does my wall docker never come back attached to the cord?-then my friend stepped on my headphones, and felt really bad about it (they were on floor because when she "returned" them, she missed my bed as she tossed them) so she gave me hers which were only slightly broken. that means that both earbuds were working, but the left one was hanging together by a single wire. after about a year, the left earbud stopped working, and i slept with only one piece in my ear. 

then i finally broke down and bought new headphones. the college bookstore had a pair for eleven dollars, which falls out slightly above my headphone price range, but the guy who worked there swore they were good. but then again, all he knows is that he has to sell everything behind the counter, so he probably wasn't such a great judge of quantity.

anyway, these headphones are great. they're comfortable and provide great sound quality. except one morning i woke up to find the black rubber piece that goes on the end of the earbud was missing. i looked all over for it and it was gone. so i asked sister1 if i could look around in her headphones graveyard to find a spare part. she hates to throw anything out, and this extends to non-working headphones. I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of saving them is. maybe she's waiting for The Second Coming of Headphones or something. in any event, I'm glad she saves everything, because i found a black rubber piece that fit over my headphones. it's a little too loose and it falls off quite often, but i always seem to manage to find it. it's uncanny. if i wake up in the morning and it's not on the headphones, i know it's somewhere under my  pillow. if i take my ipod out of my bag and it's not attached, i know it's somewhere in my bag (although it will take me a good fifteen minutes to find it because my bag is huge). if all else fails, i check the floor of my car and it somehow shows up there too. yesterday I'd thought I'd lost it for real and then sister1 told me she'd found it and stuck it in my bag. 

so far, it looks like I've found The One. the Perfect Pair. but I'm holding my breath.