As I stripped the bed in preparation for laundry day, I reflected that I had slept pretty well last night, considering. Considering that the one big drawback (well, the bigger one of two) with my new apartment is that the radiators throw off so much heat that I have to keep the windows open to maintain a reasonable temperature. But I digress…

I had been up and about for nearly an hour before I noticed that the AirPod charging case was not plugged into my Mac. But no worries. I turned around and there it was on the end table where I had it last evening. I mainly use the AirPods with my Apple TV, and I usually have the charging case on the end table next to my reclining chair so it’s available for a quick charge when I take a break.

The only problem was the AirPods weren’t in the case.

I remembered falling asleep while watching TV last evening, and I remembered waking up and groggily getting into bed. I even remembered taking out my hearing aids and putting them in their case. But I couldn’t specifically recall what I did with the AirPods.

Part of the mystery was quickly solved. One of the AirPods, the right side one, was lying on the floor just behind the end table.

But where was the other one?

Thus began the search to end all searches.

I pulled the sub-woofer away from the wall so I could move the filing cabinet. I aimed the iPhone’s flashlight here, there, and everywhere. I moved the reclining chair. I groped inside the reclining chair.

And those seemed to be the only places that it might have been. I have a very small apartment. Oh, I made a cursory search of the rest of the place, at least the path from the reclining chair to the bed, but where could it possibly be?

(Apple is set to unveil a Find My AirPod feature in the next version of iOS, but that doesn’t do me any good now.)

Once again suspicion fell on my chair. I figured the AirPod must have fallen off while I dozed and then slipped into the crevices. Another more thorough search was called for.

Which also proved fruitless.

Where the hell could it possibly be?

I decided I needed to put it out of my mind for a while, think about something else and maybe an idea will occur to me. So I went back to doing my chores. Actually, I hadn’t neglected them. The towels were now in the dryer, so I went to check to see how dry they were. Still quite wet.

But when I closed the dryer door and restarted it, I heard an odd sound. A clicking, clacking noise of some sort. That didn’t sound like towels. Could it be…?

It could. My AirPod was in the dryer.

While I can’t say for certain how it got there, I’m assuming that it must have been mixed in with the bed linen. Which means that it went through one complete wash cycle and was in the middle of its third dryer cycle.

Could it possibly still work?

I placed it in its charging case and the yellow charging indicator light came on. That was a good sign.

So I turned on the Apple TV and put the AirPods in my ears.

Un-be-friggin-lievably they still worked!