I’ve tried all sorts of miniature headphones, and the only ones that I like are the ones that come with my Zune. What makes them special? They fit and don’t fall out. I try not to be too demanding. But the other day, I was getting out of my car, and due to a badly-stowed Zune, the headphones dangled out of my pocket and got caught in the door. Before I realized what happened, I had taken a few steps away from the car, and the headphones snapped. You always hurt the things you love, because if you didn’t love them, you wouldn’t use them all the time and accidentally break them. (Well, and when you hurt the things you don’t love, you don’t get all bent out of shape about it.) It’s sort of why most automobile accidents happen close to home: Because you spend most of your time near your home. When I went about looking for replacement headphones, I was stymied. You can’t buy replacement original Zune headphones; you can only buy the fancy premium headphones. But I don’t want the premium headphones; I want the boring plain headphones that I fell in love with.

I did come up with a solution eventually: I got a Zune for my brother as a gift, but I snuck the headphones out of the box before giving it to him. (Yes, I told him that I had stolen his headphones; he didn’t mind.)