The mystery of the missing ballpoints

Life is strange and wonderful, and even inanimate objects move in mysterious ways. Take ballpoints, for example. Everyone knows that they have a habit of disappearing, and nobody, not even Douglas Adams, knows for sure where they go. No matter how many you buy (or "borrow"), they always disappear after a few days, and you are forced to go back to your ever-growing collection of  rejects of all sizes and shapes, in the hope of finding one that works. In my case, the choice is simple: for the past year, I have relied on a pen of which the top is missing, so that it wobbles while I write. I hate it, but I am convinced that it is this very defect that prevents it from disappearing, so in a sense, I am also grateful.

Of course, the parallels with the animate world are not lost on me. Just like genes, which must disseminate to ensure the continued success of the species, ballpoints strive towards new frontiers, where they can lead long successful lives (or at very least find gainful employment). And equally obviously, I do realize that pens are not actively involved in a struggle for survival. But there definitely is selection going on, and the fittest are surviving, even though - unfortunately for me - it is elsewhere.

Which leads to the thought that maybe I should be a tougher taskmaster, and simply throw the wobbly pen away. But how can I? It has been my salvation for over a year now. A hate-love dilemma if I ever saw one.

Footnote (pun intended): you might be tempted to see parallels with socks as well, but that would be just plain silly, because socks never disappear in pairs. It is always only one, and I cannot for the life of me imagine any gainful employment for a single sock (other than possibly as a makeshift puppet for children).

Finding socks in the dark

Life is full of big and little mysteries. The big mysteries are the ones that my children ask from time to time: where do we come from, what happens when we die, what is out there at the end of the universe (or, in the immortal words of Buzz Lightyear, beyond infinity)? Great minds spend their whole lives pondering such mysteries. And then there a the mysteries that are too small too warrant any kind of serious investigation. One of mine is as follows. 

Most evenings, as soon as I come home from work, I change into a track suit, which I find more comfortable than the clothes I wear to work. I also change my "day" socks for a pair of white sport socks for the same reason. Then, when I go to bed, I change into pyjamas and leave the track suit on a chair next to my bed. In the morning, I keep my pyjama on while making breakfast, but use the same white socks again. And here's the mystery: the vast majority of the time, I will find one sock either on the floor or dangling from the end of one leg of the track suit pants, and the other tangled with the underpants. This is so systematic that in wintertime, when it is still dark, I hardly ever have to turn on the light to find them. 

The logical explanation for this is that I always take off the pants in such a way as to ensure that this happens (and I am definitely a creature of habit), but I just tried to reproduce the routine (I am in my track suit now), and the outcome was as one might expect: both socks end up at the far end of the pant legs (they only drop to the floor if you lift the pants up). According to quantum physics, the fact that one observes an experiment influences the outcome, but I hardly think that this is the problem here. But unfortunately, as with so many little mysteries, it really isn't worth finding out. 

So I will just leave it at that, and be happy that I can find my socks in the dark.