Inanimate Messaging, Part II

Do your inanimate objects have a secret link to your bank balances? Mine do.

For more than a week I let a $2,000 check sit idly on my desk. It represented payment for arranging a meeting between one of my consulting clients and a supermarket chain. I finally got around to depositing the check on Tuesday.

But the mere presence of that check inspired my IO’s (inanimate objects) to acts of mischief. On Sunday, Gilda took my car to drop Ellie off at the train station. Returning home, she felt a chill in the car. It seems the right front passenger window inexplicably dropped down into the door frame. She could hear the window motor churning, but no glass popped up.

Bottom line: $381.68 for a new regulator.

Wednesday night Gilda awoke from deep sleep to claim she heard a strange noise coming from our sump pump. Since the last time she had a premonition about our sump pump it proved accurate to the tune of a four-foot pool in our basement, I figured it was well worth a midnight visit to the nether regions of our home. Nope, nothing wrong with the sump pump. But while I was down there I discovered a drip from our electric water heater. The next day the plumber confirmed a multiplicity of problems caused by too much water pressure.

Bottom line: $592.49 for a new regulator (I’m beginning to dread that word), a new pressure release valve and a new bladder extension tank (it’s not enough that I have to worry about my own bladder at night, now I have to be concerned with the water heater’s).

The IO’s are also clairvoyant. The check had not even arrived when the microwave oven, for 23 years a trusted part of our household, chose to go to that appliance kingdom of the sky, er, landfill.

Bottom line: $65.01 for a new microwave oven.

In case you’re not doing the arithmetic, that’s $1,039.18.

I can’t wait to discover what will be the next IO that requires repair or replacement.


Editor’s Note: Long-time readers of this blog might recall a previous missive on my experience with IO’s. Here’s a link, for those who might have missed it: http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2009/10/iminginanimate-messaging.html.

Editor’s Note 2: The media is full of stories speculating on how Tiger Woods and his fans will react to his return to the links. Here’s what I said last December 4:

Now that Tiger Woods has shown he’s mortal and susceptible to the enticements of flesh not worn by his wife, the question remains how golf fans will react.

Unruly, disgraceful, vulgar fans make sitting in ballparks uncomfortable for many, particularly those with children in tow. Epithets shouted at players like Alex Rodriguez for his womanizing and steroid use would blanche even a sailor’s face.

Golf is different, some say. Fans are deferential. As in tennis when a player is about to toss a ball for a serve, they quiet down when a shot is to be made.

But all it takes is one shrill outcry released during a backswing for decorum to be smashed. Whose to say that one of Lefty’s (that’s Phil Mickelson) ardent fans is not savoring this moment when the Tiger is at last vulnerable, that he or she is not waiting to unleash a verbal missile that breaks Tiger’s concentration during the arc of contact?

Fewer and fewer unblemished icons—in sports, politics, entertainment, business, you name it—remain.