I Swallowed An AirPod

I swallowed an AirPod today. I don’t know what possessed me. It was just so smooth and round with a little tail, like a tiny speech bubble. It went down surprisingly easy. I waited for a while to see if anything exciting would happen but nothing did, so I continued on with my day as usual.

About an hour later, my phone rang.

The screen read “UNKNOWN NUMBER”. I normally don’t answer my phone, but I had an estimate done recently for some work on my house and was hoping this was a callback with the quote. I answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Hello! It’s Me!” said a watery voice. They sounded far away. There was also a lot of background noise.

“Sorry, I don’t recognize this number,” I said.

“I know! It took me a loooong time to figure out how to work this thing. I’m glad I was able to reach you,” said the voice.

“Yeah, so who is this?” I asked.

“I’m your inner child,” the voice informed me.

“Um. What?” I honestly don’t know what I was expecting, swallowing an AirPod. But it was definitely not this.

Hello?

“Uhh, how are you calling me?” I bumbled.

“Suspension of disbelief,” replied my inner child.

“Fair enough,” I said, shoving the thought "This isn’t happening” from my mind.

“It has been a long time since we talked! Or since you let me talk, really,” said the voice.

“Okay, is there anything you’d like to tell me?” I asked my inner child, who had called me, from a wireless earbud, that I’d swallowed on a whim.

“YES. Hold on, I’ve got a list here. Let’s see. Number one: Stop drinking coffee. It’s too hot and it smells gross.”

“No can do, I’m sorry.” I told the voice.

“Well, then maybe you could formulate a plan to increase your levels of cotton candy consumption?” said my inner child.

“I’ll see what I can do. That’s very business-like talk, by the way. I thought you were a kid,” I said.

“I KNOW. Since you brought it up, I can’t sit through one more slideshow presentation about optimizing productivity,” demanded the voice.

“You and me both,” I said, which was an extremely accurate phrase for a couple reasons.

“When was the last time you jumped on a trampoline anyway?” the voice asked me.

“Hmm dunno. Probably a few years ago?” I guessed.

“It was 24 years ago. In your best friend Danielle’s backyard, after high school graduation. Which is ridiculous because you have one NOW! In your OWN BACKYARD. I hear your kids screaming on it all the time.”

The voice had a point.

“Few more questions: Do dogs have souls? How hard is it to drive a car? And how expensive and cool is it to get $100 in grown up money? Because that’s like a million dollars in kid money,” asked my inner child.

“No idea but I hope so. Not super hard once you practice a little and $100 is still pretty cool even in grown up money,” I replied.

“I knew it!” said the voice. “Ok listen. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to talk to you this way, based on how things go around here. Before this phone jumps onto the swirly slide, can I ask you one more thing?”

“Go for it,” I said.

“Could you look up sometimes?” asked my inner child.

“Like from my phone?” I asked.

“Yeah, but also just in general. Kids are always looking up because we’re short and we’re curious and everything is above us. Then humans get taller and they stop wondering about things and forget to look up. You’re missing a lot of cool stuff. Birds, clouds, airplanes, trees, stars. These are all excellent daydream jump-starters.”

“I can definitely do that,” I replied. “Talk to you soon?” but I didn’t hear any response. Then I heard the powering down noise. The battery on my AirPod had died.

I put the phone down and looked out into my backyard. A magpie was jumping around on the grass, its cobalt wings and oil slick tail perfectly complimenting its tuxedo body. I opened the sliding glass door and walked out to the trampoline.