Magical Tools

(62) Magical Tools

Some inanimate objects seem to have powers we can only ascribe to supernatural intervention of some kind.

It hasn’t snowed here in Moote Pointe recently, and that’s probably because no one has put away the snow shovels yet. Should they, we can expect another storm.

Notice how often it doesn’t rain when you take the umbrella along – and how often it does when you don’t.

Your coffee, your sugar and your milk hold secret conversations devising ways to make sure you run out of each at different times, assuring multiple trips to the supermarket where one should do.

The color and black ink cartridges in you home printer have similar conversations, and count on this: you have never run out of each at the same time. Of course, with the printer, you can expect such conversations because the ink cartridges are right next to each other.

The heating oil and electric bills engage in another kind of conspiracy. They talk while in the mail to make sure they both arrive on the same day, or at least in the same pay period.

The clothes dryer eats socks. You put in 14 and 13 come out. Or eleven. Never an even number. Most socks aren’t very nutritious, so the dryer will eventually spit ‘em back to you. But not until you’ve spent a frustrating washday morning searching for the missing in action.

Books arranged in alphabetical order – like the dictionary or the telephone directory change the order as soon as you start looking for something.

Then there’s the telephone. You know it’s going to ring while you’re in the shower, or doing something else that makes it tough to answer. And usually, it’s a wrong number.

The cure would be to take the cell phone or the wireless into the bathroom so that when it rings you can still answer it. But this raises another issue: telephones like to swim, but can’t. So you run the risk of the thing leaping into the tub to its death.

And don’t even START to think about metronomes.

How does this all happen? Is there some great invisible force guiding our appliances, rain and snow obliterators, books, food, bills, paychecks, telephones and rhythm machines?

It’s troubling. We don’t know what to expect next. Drawers that stick at random times and don’t at others? Appointments in your Palm Pilot appearing at random? Decoy ducks that fly? Razors that nick you even when you don’t use them?

Will your Sinatra collection start playing Mozart or Led Zeppelin when you slip the discs into the changer or turn on the iPod?

And don’t even think about maps.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™

©wjr 2006