THE INNATE PERVERSITY
OF INANIMATE OBJECTS

Take the case of the electric extension cords. What is an extension cord? It is supposed to be simply a pair of insulated wires to reach from the electrical outlet to the appliance which you wish to use. (Because the appliance manufacturer didn't have gumption enough to make its own cord long enough in the first place.) We won't include in this category of perversity the fact that when you buy one it is so tightly coiled that it seems it will never be usable to its intended full length. It does eventually straighten out but it is then that its inherited propensities become manifest. You plug it in then attach the other end to whatever you want to use, say a jig saw. You start to work and everything is going fine until you notice that you are unable to push the saw forward. You look around to find that the cord has found a wedge-shaped cut in the board you are sawing and is firmly and defiantly anchored there. Simple enough to correct and so you do and proceed. The saw balks again. You see it is not caught as before but has somehow crawled under your foot and you are standing on it. No problem there, just step aside. Episode three is bound to come up shortly. This time you find that in spite of the care you take when you are not looking it ensnares itself very ingeniously looping two neatly formed half-hitches over the end of the saw horse in a manner that would make any boy scout proud! And so it goes. This perversity, (what else can you call it?) is in the genes. It is inherited - definitely! They are all this way. It runs in the extension cord family, no matter what the color, the brand name or the length.

Then there are eyeglasses. I have about four pairs and they are all the same way, so I know it is typical - a genetic factor inbred over the centuries. Whether in a case with a clip or just slipped into my breast pocket in the nude, I have had maybe fifty in my life so I far and they all do it. You lean over to pick up something and they jump out and land (with the lenses down naturally) on the concrete, in the grass or in the dirt. You don't have to bend down far enough for them to have a downhill fall and I 'll tell you how I know. It had been happening for years and I decided to watch one time to see just how they managed to fall uphill. I didn't have anything to pick up this time, this was just a test. I leaned over a little bit at a time and looked toward my pocket out of the corner of my left eye. When I had attained an angle of approximately forty-two degrees, as near as I could measure later, they actually did jump out. Since I was expecting it, this time I caught them before they hit the ground. In one or two unfortunate cases, however, I have stepped on them before noticing that they were gone.

For my next example we will discuss the garden hose, not the kind that you hoe with, h—o—e, but the long tube you water the garden with. Of course, there are many similarities here with the electric extension cords but since the watering hoses are usually longer and come in a wider variety of materials the opportunity for perversity is compounded according to the square of the variety. Let's start at the end you screw on the faucet. You will probably pick up the wrong end to begin with so to avoid one error, pick up the other end first. Even if you do, however, it will probably be wrong. Now try screwing it on to the end of the faucet. Even if you can get it started it goes without saying that you can't get it screwed on tightly enough to keep it from leaking when you turn on the faucet. But after you have checked to see if it needs a new washer and used the pliers to tighten it, you start to pull it out to where the flower bed is (around the corner from the faucet). Naturally, you have the foresight to turn it on before you start toward the flower bed. When you get within squirting distance you squeeze the handle on the nozzle and nothing comes out. (Did you really expect it to?) You pause to think on whether you really did turn it on. Maybe the hose has air in it and the water hasn't had time to get there yet. You squeeze again and nothing, not even air. So you go back around the corner and lome behold, even though you had the darned thing neatly coiled before you started for the flowers, when the part that was out of sight on the faucet side of the corner deliberately twisted itself into a double Carrick bend and hung up on the corner of the house. So you have to feed one end or the other through the loops to get rid of the thing and at least twice in the process you accidentally hit the handle of the nozzle and then you know for sure that you did turn it on because you have a wet face to prove it. With these minor difficulties out of the way you move on to water a few isolated pots. The hose, you find out after a few tugs, will not reach so you drop the end to bring the pots a little closer. You should have known better. Remember the last time you dropped the hose and it landed on the handle? You got another face full of water or wet your clothes thoroughly.

For my final and probably most disgusting example of perversity, consider the common wire clothes hanger. Though you have placed them on the closet rod as separate entities,when you try to take out a skirt or shirt, you find that a Chinese wire puzzle maker has been practicing his art. You pull, tug, twist and turn but find they are inextricably entwined. In the extraction process one or more of the garments usually ends up on the floor and two or three hangers have undergone dramatic changes in shape. This breed of hangers has undergone no perceptible genetic change since I saw my father tugging and jerking at them back in the early part of the twentieth century. It could be that instead of the puzzle maker the devil, himself, had gotten in that closet to test the steadfastness of one's religion. I don't know. You tell me.