From Judith’s Desk 〰️ The Airpods
- Hampton Law Firm ⚖️
- Jul 26
- 3 min read
A collection of thoughts that didn't make it to the blog.
I've spent enough time in courtrooms to know that reality rarely unfolds the way people imagine it does. Most hearings don't end with dramatic speeches or shocking confessions. Usually they end with everyone gathering their files, exchanging a few polite words, and walking toward the parking lot wondering what they're having for lunch.
This one was different.
I had just finished sitting through a hearing over allegations that never should have brought us into a courtroom in the first place. Before it was over, there was even discussion about me paying court costs. I remember standing there thinking that somehow, once again, I was about to write a check because of problems that had absolutely nothing to do with decisions I had made.
Then, almost without taking a breath, the conversation shifted.
"Have you seen his AirPods?"
For a second I honestly thought I had misunderstood the question.
Not because AirPods aren't worth looking for. They certainly are. But I had just walked out of court after defending myself, and somehow the next order of business was whether I knew where a missing pair of earbuds might be.
Suddenly everyone was looking at me.
Had I seen them?
Could I check?
Would I call someone?
Did I know where they might be?
I started making phone calls. My mother. The body shop where my vehicle happened to be. Anywhere I could think of that might possibly solve a problem that, if I'm being completely honest, wasn't actually mine to solve in the first place.
It wasn't until I was driving home that I started laughing.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was familiar.
Somewhere along the way, I had quietly accepted a job description that nobody had ever officially given me. I had become the person everyone expected to fix things. It didn't matter who created the problem. It didn't matter whose responsibility it actually was. If something went wrong, somehow the conversation eventually found its way back to me.
The missing AirPods weren't really about AirPods.
They were about expectation.
They were about years of automatically stepping in, automatically carrying the responsibility, automatically believing that if I just handled one more thing everything would finally settle down.
Standing in that parking lot, it occurred to me that the hearing had ended, the lawyers had packed up, and the judge had gone on with the rest of the day's docket. The legal issue was over.
Yet somehow I was still the emergency contact.
Looking back, that's probably why I remember the AirPods more than anything that happened inside the courtroom. They weren't the biggest issue that day.
They were simply the clearest illustration of a role I had been playing for far too long without ever realizing I'd accepted the part. While my day and heart were not only left abandoned by the man who swore to be my side, I was once again alone, giving his ex wife money.
Funny how life will sometimes hand you a missing pair of earbuds just to show you something much bigger.
JLH
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