Today so far has been a day of dropped things. First, on the way to work, a man turned in front of me and pop! His wallet fell out of his back pocket and dropped to the ground. He didn’t notice, I guess, and kept biking, so I stopped to grab the wallet before it got run over and yelled “hey! Your wallet!” Amazingly, he actually heard me–otherwise, I would have been making a mad sprint to catch up with him–and turned around to collect his wallet and the cards that had fallen out of it. Save #1!
Then, another 2 miles or so into my commute, I was about to pass a woman up the Washington Park hill when pop! Her cell phone fell out of her pocket. “Your cell phone!” I said; she stopped to gather it up again. Save #2!
I’m not sure why this thought came to mind, but after the woman grabbed her cell phone I couldn’t help but think that had either of these two people been wearing headphones, it would have been much more difficult for me to have gotten them their things back. I would have caught up to them eventually, I suppose, if I’d had to actually reel them in, but it was so lovely that they both actually heard me when I tried to get their attention, even, in the guy’s case, from somewhat far away.
So there you go. Totally anecdotal and specific-situation based reason why headphones are a bad idea: when you lose your shit, it will be much harder to give it back to you. :)