never connect the headphones to something in the "center"

That's why it was understandable.

But the first thing that occurred to me when I pulled it out of the package was ``manufacturing defect''. You see, my wife once bought a pair of earbuds at the flea market (for some reason, she destroys headphones in just a few months, so it doesn't make sense to spend more than $5 on a pair -- $1 made even more sense) and she didn't discover until she got home that the cord to one was about three inches long from the split and the cord to the other was of normal length.