Mom on the Run: Hey Mom, where’s my iPod?

Lianne Wilkens/Columnist
Published: March 23, 2008

So here's the thing about a missing iPod: it's hard to know when it's really and truly lost, gone forever, and not just hiding somewhere around the house.

They're small, iPods, they tuck nicely and quietly into unnoticed nooks and crannies and can be easily overlooked, which is alarming given that a teenage girl's very happiness is apparently wholly dependent upon one. When the worst happens, when the iPod goes missing, at what point does the bereft teenager move on, stop grieving, and find it in herself—and her lean wallet—to buy a new one?

That's where we are now. My 16-year-old daughter's iPod has been missing, "since last Wednesday!," she wails regularly. "I've looked everywhere. Everywhere!"

Bedroom, minivan, jacket and sweatshirt pockets, purses recently used and purses long put away, backpacks and sports bags, bookshelves and desk and dresser drawers, down behind desks and dressers, even the pantry and laundry room, all have been checked. And checked and checked.

"How about your bed? Could it have gotten shoved under there?"

So under the bed was emptied and tidied—a monumental effort undertaken only because what was missing was the beloved iPod. But it was just another disappointment.

"Nobody turned it in at the gym or the Boys and Girls Club," she says sadly. Her father and I nod sympathetically, but we look at each other and silently agree: We hadn't expected it to have been turned in, anyway. Because that's the other thing about iPods: they are expensive, everyone wants one, and they can be easily stolen, snuck into a pocket and reprogrammed later, my daughter's 657 songs, 1.9 hours of TV shows and 4.3 hours of podcasts—all evidence of true ownership, the electronic mirror of who she is—completely erased with the push of a button.

Personally, I'm OK with the iPod being missing. My daughter was respectful with it, made sure she could hear conversation around her and left it home when called for, but still, there was a lot of time when she sat, earbud in place, nodding along to a soundless rhythm, silently mouthing lyrics nobody else could share. And, really and truly, how can you possibly do homework, watch TV, concentrate in any way with a never-ending personal soundtrack? So I don't mind it being gone.

But her misery in the iPod's absence is painful to live with. The text messages are brief and frequent: "Not under bed." "Cleaned room. No iPod." When a song comes on the radio, she stops singing mid-way and sighs, "This was on my favorites playlist," and then falls into silence. And, "Here iPod, iPod!," she calls sadly as she wanders through the house, flipping over magazines and feeling inside couch cushions—again.

I wonder at the dependence, at the accidental loss of something so expensive and apparently valuable, and, realizing that listening to her sing off-key to music I can't hear is better than this, I get up to help look—again.

Lianne Wilkens lives with her family in Manassas. She can be reached at .