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{ed A long, original piece}

    There is a peculiarity that runs through the human race. We tend to
    think of ourselves as advanced, scientific, thoughtful beings, but when
    something out of the ordinary springs up, we have a myriad of excuses
    to cover our backs with:
        "The wife must have moved it."
     	"God is punishing me for cheering for Notre Dame."
     	"I guess I've been drinking to much basin, tub, and tile cleaner."
     	"Damn kids.."
     	Etc., etc....

    Many are the events that we simply accept without question. For
    example: anyone who has had even the most basic training in physics
    knows that if you apply a force to an object, your change that objects
    velocity/motion/position. If you kick a sleeping cat, it flies in a
    parabolic course across the room until it comes in contact with
    something massive enough to absorb its inertia, right? If the cat hits
    a lamp, then inertia is transferred, and the lamp falls off the end
    table, and the cat hits the floor at a run, and ultimately strikes back
    by having a load of kittens on your pillow. (Trust me on that one.) If
    you trip and fall to the ground, your transfer inertia to the planet
    itself, and moves the earth infinitessimally. (Here's a thought - what
    would happen if we got everyone on one side of the earth, then got
    everyone to jump straight up at the same time?) Why then, in spite of
    all this, does a shower curtain float in to cling to your leg, even
    when faced with all the water power a showerhead can muster? This has
    happened to EVERYONE who has ever showered, but no one seems to care.
    At best, some people figure that SOMEBODY knows, and it all makes
    perfect sense, but no one has time to go look it up.

    Here we are, in the midst of the Scientific Revolution, remaining
    stubbornly apathetic about this shower curtain defying both gravity and
    the laws of motion to cling to our bare, soapy legs. Ben Franklin would
    have been furious.

    Before you get your hopes up, I must admit that I don't know what the
    shower curtain is up to, either. All the answers I come up with point
    to the presence of a non-human intelligence, and I don't want to think
    too much more about it. I feel vulnerable enough in the shower without
    worrying that a shower curtain- shaped invader is looking for a skin
    sample.

    No, there are other mysteries I want to ponder on. To wit, the erratic
    behavior of clothes hangers and of socks, and the possible
    relationships between the two. You see? All of you know already what
    I'm talking about, and you feel guilty for not wondering about it
    sooner. For shame.

    Where do all the extra hangers come from? Have you ever put two bare
    clothes hangers in the closet, and returned later to find just two bare
    coat hangers? Only if you've left the closet light on. Something about
    darkness causes hangers to replicate themselves at an alarming rate.

    Is it the absence of light itself? Reversed photosynthesis? God help us
    if we ever drop a coat hanger deep in a cave, if this is the case. The
    near- complete blackness possible underground would cause the hanger to
    pop off a copy of itself at whatever rate an asexual coat hanger could
    pop, and they soon break the cave apart and, in a worst-case scenario,
    eventually outweigh the earth. If we assume that the rate of
    reproduction increases as the amount of light decreases, it is
    interesting to imagine what would happen if a hanger were to find
    itself in a black hole. The gravity of the black hole would be crushing
    the hanger into nothingness, but the hanger would be reproducing
    exponentially at an infinite rate of speed. One coat hanger could
    battle a black hole to a standstill.

    For the moment, let us discard the above theory (if there is anyone who
    has not done so already). There is evidence against it: families have
    been away from their homes for months or years, and returned to not
    find there house reduced to a jungle-gym for hangers. Also, hangers
    never seem to get out of the closet on their own. Furthermore, this
    replicating of coat hangers has been most often documented when there
    is more than one hanger to start with, suggesting a mating is taking
    place. Perhaps the darkness is required to maintain hanger modesty,
    just as human beings prefer to "do it" with the lights out. Our limited
    human senses have been unable so far to distinguish male and female
    hangers, but maybe we all look the same to them, too. Perhaps coat
    hangers are hermaphroditic, and not built to be able to copulate with
    itself. This seems logical enough, especially when you consider that
    hangers which have clothes draped on them don't exhibit signs of
    replicating. It is possible that we humans, by using these hangers as
    we feel they are meant to be used, are forcing them to practice "safe
    sex". This theory only works if we assume that hangers are born already
    fully grown - or at least full-sized. There have been no reports of
    baby coat hangers mysteriously appearing.

    If we assume that the above theory is close to correct, we are given
    some insight into hanger morals. Have you noticed that hangers seem to
    be always tangled together, even when there were just two of them four
    feet apart the night before? You have just walked in on a hanger orgy.
    The little beasts have no scruples once the light goes out.

    Do you see the scope of what I'm trying to get at? We simply do not
    know what is going on. It doesn't just stop with coat hangers, either.
    If it did, then maybe we could just ignore it and continue our lives in
    blissful ignorance, but there is more. To wit:

    What happens to the other sock? You wear them at the same time, remove
    them at the same time, cast them into the same hamper, throw them in
    the wash together, and one of them disappears before you take them out
    of the dryer. As you may have feared, I have several theories
    explaining this, some of them tying in with the coat hanger mystery:

    1) the socks are afraid of the wash, so when they are all in there
    together, they choose one of their number to act as a sacrifice to some
    god in exchange for deliverance from the wet and sudsy hell. The
    sacrifice is slowly unraveled during the course of the wash, and is
    pulled away in the spin cycle. Or maybe it's the dryer that they don't
    like, and we are removing what's left of the unfortunate sock when we
    clean the lint filter. This theory shows a primitive and fearful sock
    society.

    2) one sock from each pair, at some point in time, retreats by whatever
    means into the pipes leading out of the washer. it hibernates deep in
    the bowels of the house until it receives some sort of signal, then it
    pupates into a coat hanger, and makes its way somehow into the closet.
    In effect, socks are the larval form of coat hangers.

    3) (really a variant of #2) during the wash, the socks participate in a
    bizzare mating dance, after which the female sock devours the male
    sock. Following a rapid gestation period, the female gives birth to a
    baby coat hanger, which slowly and stealthily creeps to the closet. By
    the time it is in the closet, it has matured to a full-grown hanger,
    ready to sow its oats.

    These are but a few examples of what can happen when the human mind is
    employed to learn, to probe, to question as opposed to merely keeping
    the ears from touching. The coat hanger/sock mystery is just one of
    thousands of questions that need to be examined, along with: "Why does
    the soulful allure of rap music continue to elude me?" "What is the
    opposite of sideways?" "How can you tell if yogurt goes bad?" "How
    hungry was the person who discovered escargo?" "Was disco as bad as
    everyone remembers it to be?" Etc., etc....

    I could go on, but it is time for my soap opera. Until next time....
--
    Christian

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