By now, my faithful readers will sense a theme running through many of my ramblings. It is that everyday items – things we use routinely – are often out to get me. I know this sounds implausible, but it is in fact true. The incidents are just too many and too frequent to be explained in any other way. Oh, I know some nay-sayers will attribute it to sheer coincidence or even personal clumsiness. Not so, I contend. We all think that inanimate objects don’t have feelings, desires, that they’re not feeling rejected when we put them in the basement or set them out at yard sales. Not true – they’re nursing grudges and plotting revenge. They’re telepathing instructions to something else I’m about to use.
Why, just this morning, I was cleaning out some old files, shredding a bunch of papers that were outdated. As I was emptying out the bin, the trash bag collapsed, dumping shredded paper all over the floor. Clearly not my fault, right? If they made trash bags that did their duty and stood up straight, I wouldn’t have this problem. Equally clearly (in my mind), the plastic bag industry has failed us by not developing a bag that’s up to the task when we empty something into it. Those bags always seek to fold up and inward in the most annoying ways. Added to that, the shredded paper became little tiny magnets, sticking to me, the furniture, the carpet, everything. It’s like crumbs in bed – you try to brush them all way and they bounce back at you. That’s just proof positive that God is laughing at us.
On a recent grocery shopping trip, the young man bagging my groceries very thoughtfully put the eggs on top so they wouldn’t get broken. Even though I put a bungie around the bag, I heard that particular bag tip over going around a corner. Sure enough – well, you can see where this is going. Omelet makings, and once again, God chuckles.
I’ve have written before about the downsides of gravity – particularly if you’re older. There are indeed times that we don’t want downward force acting against us. Certain things, breakable ones for example, should linger in the space in front of us until we can regain our grasp. My wife dropped a container of mixed nuts the other day. It fell to the floor, and because it’s round, it rolled around for about two hundred yards, banked a sharp left, and came to a stop dead center under a chair. No, no, it couldn’t stop out in the open. That’s too much for which to hope. Under the furniture, where I had to get down on my hands and knees (not an easy maneuver nor a pretty sight) and retrieve it. Fortunately, and this is a rarity, the top was on or we’d have had a trail of mixed nuts right to Hansel and Gretel’s under-chair den. Why, just this morning, I was getting down the container of Steel-Cut oats, steel-cut mind you, when the top came off and . . . . . yes, I can tell you too in the future. What, but the way, are “steel-cut”? Does that mean that regular oats are cut with scissors or a ginsu? Was Louis XVI “steel-cut”? I know, I know. Too soon. Adding insult to, well, mild annoyance, I opened up my Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes opportunity – did I mention that I’m a Platinum Preferred Presidential Customer? – and on multiple pages, there were sets of “secure” plastic storage containers for things like . . . . OK, God, now you’re mocking me, aren’t you?
This will surprise everyone (or perhaps nobody) that knows me, but I sometimes flash bits – just bits, if you please, of temper when thwarted by seemingly innocuous little non-living pieces of everyday life. Paint that dribbles to where it’s not supposed to go. Recently, I was making a sandwich. To avoid that stream of water that comes out first from the mustard container, I gave it a quick shake. Of course, the top was not on securely, so I managed to create a bright yellow arc across the kitchen. Or the time I took out the glass refrigerator shelf to clean the maple syrup spill. I know – I too am seeing into the future. To quote from the movie, Christmas Story, “in the heat of battle, my father wove a tapestry of obscenity that, as far as we know, is still hanging in space . . .” My daughter could say something similar about any number of my little repair projects. In fact, since she went away to school, she and my wife, talking by phone, will often judge the success of any project by the quality and quantity of colorful language. Making the “shelf incident” even more excruciating, the manufacturer no longer makes that size shelf, so I had to have a new one specially made. Not, of course before I was forced to share a certain elevated volume with several customer service representatives. I was going to turn on the oven that same day to clean itself, but decided that, the way things were going, I’d probably set the house on fire.
I’ll pick up an armload of newspapers and magazines to truck off to the dump, only to have those nice, glossy sales inserts slide all over the place, particularly on a nice, windy day. Or reach into the closet to get a bottle of seltzer and one tips, knocking all of them over like bowling pins. Getting a fitted sheet onto the mattress is sometimes a beastly business. I never get the corners on right the first time – again, it thwarts me. The seatbelts in my car never quite recoil properly, so I hear that metallic “clunk” when I attempt to close the door. And the hatchback has long since lost its spring, so I’m likely to bump my head as it works its way up in a leisurely fashion. The door closer on the back door also likes to take its time, unless I’m bringing in armloads of things. Then it moves like the wind. I just replaced batteries in the doorbell, only to find it’s slumped back into inactivity. The vacuum cleaner cord always, always, places itself right where I want to vacuum next. (I was using it to clean up the steel-cut oats, which by now have made their way all over the house – see above.) Who among us has not tried to go through a doorway, only to have the door move back quietly into place and so we catch an arm or a shoulder? Impaled ourselves on a broom handle or raked up a basket-load of leaves just in time to have the wind kick up? Carrying something bulky up the stairs from the cellar, and it catches on the doorframe at the top? Taking something out through the sliding doors only to find out the hard way I forgot to open the sliders first?
There are, of course, the little day-to-day annoyances that keep us on our toes. Lately, it seems that a single tissue can plug up the toilet, and that bar of soap has an inappropriate affection for the shower floor. The toothpaste squirts out a giant blob, half of which ends up in the sink and clogs the drain. The tape that twists and sticks to itself as you attempt to use it, particularly if whatever you’re taping requires the use of three hands. This is often true for shipping tape, because it doesn’t like to fully separate from the Mother Ship. The last ballpoint pen that runs dry mid-word. You have three items to mail and only have two stamps. All of these I take in stride, with my usual calm dignity and just a hint of elevated blood pressure. It’s the larger elements in life that confound and take inordinate amounts of time to fix. Appliances should just come on and do what they’re supposed to do. Cars should run flawlessly if you keep putting gas in them. Lightbulbs should burn forever. And steel-cut oats should stay in the container until I command them to exit.
If these pieces of anxiety and homeland unrest are meant to build character and foster restraint among us, I’ve failed miserably. I somethings think, and my wife expresses out loud from time to time, that if I responded to people the way I respond to inanimate objects that are bound and determined to thwart me, I’d have been placed on an ice flow long ago. It’s not typically in my nature to seek utter destruction, but somehow, that picture hook where the nail bent sideways . . . . OK, deep breaths. I’m feeling better now. Time to put away the Christmas dishes.
I'm Thinking...No! 