[CRASH!!!]

Butterfingers, do that again, that’s the end of your career!
Don’t you know we try to preserve a romantic atmosphere?

Those are the opening words to the song “A Romantic Atmosphere” from She Loves Me, one of my favorite musicals that wasn’t written by Sondheim or Rodgers & Hammerstein. 

Here’s a performance from the 2016 Broadway production with the part of the Headwaiter performed by Peter Bartlett, whom some of you may recognize from a certain soap opera.

I was reminded of the song the other day when I had a butterfingers moment and dropped my Apple AirPods case which flew open causing the two AirPods to scatter across the floor.

This happens to me occasionally, and I can usually find the missing AirPods quickly enough, generally one of them has slipped under a nearby chair or table.

But not this time.

I could only locate one of the little items; the other one had disappeared completely.

And I do mean completely. I was in the middle of making lunch, and I spent ten minutes trying find the blasted thing, but without success. I was down on my hands and knees with the flashlight on my iPhone, looking under every place I thought it could have gone, but wherever it was, I could not find it.

Well, I had been planning to buy an extra set anyway, as the newest model from Apple has even better noise cancelling abilities than the older model, so it was off to the Apple Store.

When I returned, I had had time to reflect, and I realized that given where I was standing when I dropped the case, there really was only one place that the AirPod could have gone—underneath the refrigerator. If I couldn’t see it, that merely meant that it must be behind one of the legs.

So I got a tomato stake (the only long, slender thing I could think of), and slid it under the fridge, hoping that I could dislodge it from wherever it was hiding. And well, along with a fair amount of dust and dirt, I succeeded.

After disinfecting the AirPod, I now have two good sets; one that I use mainly with my iPhone and the other (the new one) that I use exclusively with the Apple TV.