I got rid of them before. But then I found more. And more. And even more.
Yes, another thing I was accumulating over the years were busted sets of headphones. And busted sets of headphones always busted for the same reason. You know that that reason is. Yes, that's right. YOU CAN ONLY HEAR THE MUSIC FROM ONE DAMN SIDE!!!
I remember my uncle telling me a related story. My uncle was once in need of a pair of headphones, and my grandfather was a flea market maniac. So naturally my grandfather insisted that he had all of these pairs that he bought recently, and he could have one. He tried a pair, and sure enough, only heard music coming form one ear. Then he tried another pair, and another pair. Finally, he managed to find ONE pair out of the whole pile that fully worked.
I've had to deal with this problem for about as long as I've had headphones. So this goes back to grammar school for me, which was in the 1980s: the golden age of the Sony Walkman. Devices like this always come with a really crappy pair of headphones. They work fine for a while. But eventually they stop working in one ear. So you have to bend the base around a bit, and it comes back. You think you have the problem solved. But then it cuts out again. And again. And again. You keep trying to bend the cord in new places until the music can be heard in both ears.
Does this problem sound familiar? Do you still have broken headphones like this in your home? If so, please do the right thing and throw the damn things away. Don't try to rationalize it like I did with ideas like "Hey, maybe I could do a cool little creative project where I can disconnect one side and make a pair of mini speakers." It ain't gonna happen. You won't get around to doing it. Just throw away the ones that don't work, and keep the ones that do work. You won't miss them, and you'll save yourself a lot of frustration.