Clarissa Tan

The clang of various Yale clock towers. Sirens in the distance. My friend’s study music that is way too loud. These sounds pierce my mind, and I have no protection against them. I have lost my AirPods.

I realized my tragic fate at dinner on Tuesday, when it finally occurred to me that I had no idea where my trusty earbuds were. Granted, I hadn’t seen them since Sunday night — but I assumed that, like usual, they were stuffed in some corner of my backpack underneath readings about biblical Jerusalem or covered by a half-empty bag of pretzels on my desk. A search had been fruitless.

“Don’t you have Find My?” asked my friend as I bemoaned my predicament. 

Oh right, I did. A quick investigation on my phone told me that not only were my AirPods not with me, they weren’t even on Yale’s campus. 

At around 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, they were at an industrial complex in Hamden, 20 minutes away. On Wednesday they spent the day in a house about a mile off-campus. What??

The last time I saw them was in the Silliman courtyard — I was lying in the grass around 9 p.m. on Sunday, contemplating my general existence as a nearly month-old Yale student to the soundtrack of Lana Del Ray. How they strolled from Silliman Courtyard to Hamden to a New Haven neighborhood, I have genuinely no idea. Maybe an opportunistic student picked them up and sold them to a non-Yalie? If you were the AirPod culprit and are reading this, I’m very disappointed. And can you please Venmo me some money so I can buy new AirPods?

Whatever happened to them, a small, white, noise-cancelling piece of me is missing — and I hate knowing that someone out there has them, out of reach. If my AirPods were on campus, I would be tracking them down right now. But alas, I am resigned to stalking Find My to see if they move — they haven’t in 18 hours — and I am left in the destitute state of being unable to control the sounds around me.

I must walk to class without Tyler, the Creator, without Kali Uchis, without Lana — a victim of the cold, boring noises of traffic and the shuffle of tired students. I must listen back to my interview recordings for the News out loud, punishing my friends with unnecessary information about flower shops and climate research. I must go on runs with only the wind roaring in my ears along Prospect St. when I call my parents, their crackly voices come through on speaker for all to hear — God forbid I hold the phone up to my ear.

I am AirPod-less for the time being, forced to tell this story to every single one of my friends whenever I feel a tug in my heart — and my ears — a phantom itch for the light green case I no longer have. 

I suppose I should just accept my fate.

As I sit in the Silliman courtyard — site of The Great AirPod Loss of 2024 — I am far more conscious of my surroundings than I would have been with The Strokes in the background. 

Crickets chirp, birds tweet, cars hum. Faint conversations trickle over to me, and a little ways away, someone just got assassinated in the Silliman frosh game of “Spoon Assassins”. I take a pause in the homework I’m doing and just breathe. The air is that perfect early fall temperature, the breeze not too harsh. 

Honestly, the circumstances could be much worse.

But. Life would be much better with my AirPods.