I bought an iPod almost three years ago, and usually I use it–but not at home where I have better music playing devices. And since my foot was broken and I was limiting my movements to where I could access these things, I wasn’t using the iPod. The last time I used it was my trip home last December.

After I got off my crutches and later became more mobile, I suddenly found the need to use the iPod. So I looked for it where I was pretty sure I had it. It wasn’t there. I thought back to where I could have last used it. At first I thought I had last used it on the trip home, so I searched my luggage and all the places I’d put stuff after I came home. Not finding it, I searched the apartment a few times over, like I did several times over the following months. No dice. I called the lost and found for the airlines, the bus line I used, even the taxi company; no one had found it. I thought maybe I hadn’t lost it on the trip, and rather that I’d taken it in to school once, so I searched my desk, the classrooms, and asked anyone if they’d found one. Still no iPod. So a few months ago, I resigned myself to having lost a $450 piece of equipment (priced that way when I bought it, anyway).

So now I’m giving the apartment a good cleaning, and am throwing away a lot of stuff that, being the pack rat that I am, I have been hoarding. That includes some plastic shopping bags that I collect but never use. I pick one up, and it is suspiciously heavy. At first I thought, ewww, that’s probably some bad juice from a year ago or something. I reach inside, and there’s the iPod.

That has to be the longest amount of time I have lost an expensive item without really having lost it. On the down side, I was all set to buy myself a new iPod–though I planned to wait for the new true-video iPod, and that’s not likely to come out for another 8 or 9 months. I’ll probably get one of those anyway, but maybe I’ll wait until revision 2 to do so.