Large Fierce Mammal

According to Flagle’s Law of the Perversity of Inanimate Objects as quoted in The Laws of Experimental Science,

Any inanimate object may be expected at any time to behave in a manner that is entirely unexpected and totally unpredictable for reasons which are completely unknown or thoroughly obscure.

This concept has been further explored by sainted artist Al Capp in his Fearless Fosdick cartoons …

We’ve all experienced the reality of this phenomenon – mostly the perversity of inanimate objects part, not the I’ll kill a criminal for your child part – and today I’d like to provide an illustrative anecdote from my own experience.

It is my belief that, when the mood strikes, an inanimate object will express its perversity for the singular purpose of irritating, and ultimately enraging, one or more of the people who are in close proximity to it. My research so far has not made it possible to discern if this is specifically targeted at one individual, like a curse, or if it’s a blanket effect that gets all over anyone in range, like a land mine. Neither can I say with certainty that the effect isn’t triggered by some mindset, attitude, state of mind, or cologne that might be a part of the equation. This will come, but I must write for you so I only have so much time. In any case, and while I could provide a number of examples, this one serves to highlight my theory that with inanimate objects, as with animate ones, a sincerely expressed intention to commit mayhem in an “If A then expect B” scenario can be called upon to set things right.

In 1985 I was living in what was at least a briefly haunted house in Lunenburg that I have written about before in my 7 September 2008 article titled Musings as Hallowe’en Approaches – Part the Second. Aside from the door issue described in that article, I had  one notable Flagle experience in the 15 years I lived there.

I was washing the dishes one fine day, standing (not surprisingly) in front of the sink which had a cupboard below it covered by two doors. Placing each washed dish on the draining rack to my left required a pivot of my body in that direction, and a small amount of footwork. On the third or fourth dish placement, I felt a jarring pain in my right knee as it collided with the edge of the left cupboard door which had opened just enough, and to the perfect degree, that enabled it to strike my knee cap dead center. Inspecting the door I could find no reason for it having come open but I chalked it up to not having been properly closed in the first place, pushed it securely shut against its magnetic latch, and continued washing the dishes.

A few dishes later, the same thing happened. This time I kicked the door shut in a cloud of blasphemy and paused to take stock of what was now clearly something not of a random nature. Rational man that I am though, I invoked the “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action” rule, and carefully inspected the door, its hinges, its latch, as well as the alignment and security of every little component. I rocked back and forth and jumped up and down on the floor boards in case some structural flexing was to blame. I found nothing – the door remained closed, so I returned to my chore with the resolve to be suspicious, and to not shift my foot position before checking that the way was clear.

A few more dishes later, I looked down to notice that the door was once again open and waiting. I looked at it for a while, carefully placed the cup in my hand on the drying rack without changing foot position, and then crouched in front of the offending door. I smiled and touched it lightly, closed and opened it a few times, and then, using the tip of my left index finger, I gently pushed it shut with the calmly spoken words, “You son of a bitch. If you ever open again without a human hand on your latch I will rip you off your fucking hinges, throw you into the yard, and make a fire out of you.”

I was taken at my word and the issue never came up again.