Ray Romano once lost a flashlight and then found it in his underwear: 'Another place I have to look'

Ray Romano is shining a light on a recent experience that “scared the hell out of me.”

While visiting Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday, the Somewhere in Queens star and director recalled the harrowing moment he recently lost the small flashlight he uses to read in bed at night only to find it hanging out in the strangest place possible: his underwear. 

“A couple weeks ago, I fall asleep reading. I wake up and I can’t find [the flashlight]. I’m like a crazy man, I’m in my underwear running around,” he told host Jimmy Kimmel. “I’m obsessed now, I gotta find this, and she gets mad at me, my wife. She’s like, ‘Let it go.’ And I can’t let it go.”

The Everybody Loves Raymond alum said that he was on the phone with his agent while frantically searching for the lost light for at least 20 minutes before its location dawned on him.

“I stop and I go, ‘Wait a minute. I think I found it,’ because I look down and hanging out of the underwear is the strap,” he recalled. “Listen to me, I don’t know if you’re forgetting the part of the story, for 20 minutes I didn’t know. I’m freaking out. What kind of old man numb ball disease do I have?”

The moment has plagued him ever since. “Am I wrong to be weirded out by it?” Romano asked.

Kimmel swiftly replied, “You should be troubled by this. Definitely.”

Romano added that he understands that there are “things that you could find in your underwear and be able to shrug it off” without too much heartache, but they’re not nearly flashlight-sized. “Like, ‘Oh, a nickel! Hey, look, I had a nickel!’” He joked. “That or a Cheerio, ‘How’d a Cheerio get in my thing?’ But a flashlight — a flashlight!”

His thought process only spiraled further from there. 

“Here’s the thing, what if I gave up?” he asked. “What if I got dressed for the day? I remember that day, I was flying to New York, that would’ve been a fun airport security experience, right? The guy on his laptop, ‘Excuse me sir, you’ve got a weapon in your underwear?’ I would’ve been, ‘Well, a weapon, I don’t know…’”

The scariest part of the experience? “Now it’s just another place I have to look, you know?” he told a laughing Kimmel. “Like if you can’t find your keys one day, you’re like, ‘Hey, what?’ And then you’ve gotta, ‘Ohhh.’”

Watch Romano discuss his flashlight underwear in the clip above.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• Somewhere in Queens review: Ray Romano's directorial debut is slight, but moving
  
• The King of Queens cast pays tribute to late costar Jerry Stiller in special 25th-anniversary reunion
• Everybody Loves Raymond creator has tried to pitch a reunion special but had 'no takers'