The Insidiousness of Inanimate Objects

They only want you to think they’re inanimate.

Sorry to spill your dirty little secret, car keys, glasses, checkbook, and the dozens of other objects that pretend to just lie around the house or office where I set you down.  But I am not being taken in any longer.  I know that what really happens is, you wait until I’m not looking, and then you get up and go lie down someplace else.

The latest culprits are those wonky little plastic things that keep the plastic wrapper on the loaf of bread closed. Just the other night, I got a loaf of bread out of the refrigerator, removed the plastic piece, extracted two slices of bread, set them on a plate, then looked around the counter for the thingie to close up the bread again, and… it was gone!  

I know, I know!  It gave me chills, too!

I hadn’t gone anywhere.  I hadn’t turned my back.  I’d been standing there at the counter the whole two minutes, and yet the plastic thing had vanished before my very eyes!  I looked on the floor.  I looked under the plate.  I looked under the bread loaf.  It was nowhere to be found.  I’m not crazy, I promise you!  Even the voices inside my head assured me that I am perfectly fine, and they are very judgmental most of the time.

I long ago resigned myself to the fact that two socks will go into the dryer and only one will come out.  I have found my eyeglasses sitting on the hood of my car after looking everywhere for them for two days, and I am grudgingly willing to admit that there may be the slightest outside chance that I actually left them there myself when I got distracted doing something else.

But that bread closey-uppie thingie?  No way was that my fault.  It’s happened too many times, now.  Frankly, I haven’t slept well the last several nights because I know that little piece of plastic is lurking in some dark corner of my house.  Just waiting until I lower my guard, probably while I’m lying asleep in bed, and then…

and then…

…well, I don’t know what then.  Something really awful, though.  If you don’t hear from me in the next week or so, send help.  But tell them not to come alone.  That little plastic thingie has friends.