I had a lousy sleep Sunday night. My left knee felt sprained. My enlarged prostate kept demanding relief every 90 minutes or so. It was stuffy in the bedroom but I couldn’t open a window because Gilda’s allergies required us to keep outside air outside. And it was too cool for the air conditioner to go on. Perhaps I was tense about having to wake up early to drive Gilda to work in Manhattan.
All legitimate and reasonable reasons why I tossed and turned all night. It wasn’t until I sat in the dentist’s chair Monday afternoon that I discovered the real reason behind my disappointing and unrestful night. I was being subjected to another bit of torture by an inanimate object that I was retiring from service.
Mitch the dentist was putting the finishing touches on a new bite guard to lessen the impact of my teeth grinding and Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) syndrome. In other words, a persistent clenched jaw that really hurts and erodes the enamel on molars.
After years of service my old bite guard needed replacement. It exacted its revenge on being displaced from usefulness in a most relative way, by denying me a good night’s sleep during its last hours of duty.
Yes, I believe in anthropomorphism, the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. I’ve been anthropomorphisized before.
My otherwise trustworthy 1973 Chevy Vega chose to partially lose its muffler on the day I was ending our 13 year relationship by handing it over to my brother-in-law. The muffler dropped as I was about to enter the Lincoln Tunnel. I had to get out and hook it back up to the undercarriage with a wire hangar a passing motorist gave me (I now keep such a hangar in my car trunk, just in case). By the time I reached the Manhattan corner where I was to give the Vega to my brother-in-law, the car could barely travel more than half a block without stalling. Clearly, the Vega was sending a message it was unhappy our time together was over.
Here’s another example: On the last day of my employment, after 32 years of walking up Park Avenue from Grand Central Terminal, it rained. Hard. It wasn’t a surprise, so I had planned accordingly. Instead of taking a collapsible small umbrella, I toted a large umbrella given to me as a gift by the Dolphin and Swan Hotels for bringing the SPECS conference to the Disney World properties for two years.
It was a beautiful umbrella, automatic and vented to withstand wind gusts, with a carved wooden handle on which the logos of the two hotels were etched.
As I stepped out onto the street and opened the umbrella, a wind gust blew the canopy inside out. That was not supposed to happen. As I struggled to right the umbrella, the metal shaft broke in two, leaving me the handle and about three inches of shaft. A perfect metaphor for ending my paid journalism career.
I could give other examples, but I think those two suffice to convince you inanimate objects send messages, to me at least.
One would think the new bite guard would do everything within its power to insure that Monday night’s sleep was sound and refreshing. But one would be wrong. Apparently, anthropomorphic messages are sent only at the end of useful life, not at the onset.
