Inanimate Malice

Inanimate Malice
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Those of you who are aging, have you ever noticed how maliciously inanimate objects have begin to behave?

Take, for one example, the way the cord of the warming pad you put in your bed invariably catches on your toes whenever you get under the covers. Or how the sheet disappears somewhere down near your feet when you prepare to go to sleep. Or the way the shoes you so carefully took off and placed together side by side have either separated or disappeared entirely.

Or consider the way your computer has suddenly turned on you, and refused to do your bidding without a password that you have totally forgotten. Or the way some of your email is being returned as "improperly addressed." Or your keyboard has suddenly refused to connect to your screen, and the batteries in the mouse have died.

And what about simply addressing an envelope? Do you ever find that, whatever you write, you end up addressing yourself? Or when, finding cable channels, you may pick 301 but get perversely transferred to 843? If indeed, you can find the right button with which to get that channel in the first place.

Don't bother to take the T or the subway. Your train will inevitably be on the wrong line. And don't even touch the telephone. There will always be at least one digit missing, if you're not being told that you dialed the wrong number entirely (or that it's no longer in service). What about the recorded operator who says she will be with you in a moment, and keeps you waiting twenty minutes?

How many times have you left your cane at a restaurant or a movie, and when you returned to where you're were sure it was leaning, it wasn't there? How about going to the bathroom in that restaurant or in a movie, and finding that your seat is missing when you return? How about having the light change on you abruptly when you're in the midst of crossing a street?

Well, you get the picture--if you haven't mislaid it. Life is being organized to make your last years miserable.

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