Never did I realize the intensity of people’s relationships with inanimate objects until I watched the laundry pile stacked high and wide in the corner of my room take on a personality all its own.
It was not really talking to me, of course, but it seemed to be leering at me sarcastically every time I walked into my room or threw some new article of clothing on top of it, adding to the messy mass of clutter. I could swear that for the first few weeks of not doing my laundry, (because, like most women, I can probably wait two months without washing any clothes and have plenty still clean every day), the pile would rise up and taunt me with its immensity.
“What are you going to do about it now,” it seemed to ask. I saw it was a problem the first time I ran out of my room screaming, “Leave me alone,” but then I realized that I am not so weird—people talk to themselves all the time. Objects just give people something to talk too.
Think about it. How many times have you sat in the blazing heat at a red light and pleaded with it to turn green, or swore at it out loud because it turned red before you got to sail through the intersection?
A friend of mine really believes that traffic lights have personalities of their own, and that the light on Garey Ave. and Foothill Blvd. is looking out for her because it turns green every time she approaches it. “It knows the sound of my car’s engine,” she says. “It likes me.”
How many times have you lightly given your car a tap of encouragement and said, “Come on, you really can make it up this hill if you try,” or “Please, girl, get me home?” How many of you gave your cars goofy names like “Trixie” or “Sammy” because long ago you were told it was good luck by your parents who talk to their cars too?
And it goes farther than just cars and laundry. People talk aloud to whoever or whatever all day, every day. Or if they are not talking, they are singing whatever song they may have in their heads at the time.
It is not uncommon to walk into the computer lab and find 12 people huddled over computer screens singing or mumbling what sounds like a mixture between what they have already written and what they may be thinking at the time, or enter someone’s room and find them busily sorting through papers that they are attempting to organize, and reassuringly telling each document what pile it goes in before tossing it there.
After my laundry incident, I was a witness to my co-worker in the shoe department referring to a box that she could not find as “a limey bastard.” She then proceeded to kick the wall with her high heel. “It’s a conspiracy,” she said. “They hide from me.”
Could it be that we are just plain sick, or is it that we are so overwhelmed all the time that we form relationships with what cannot relate to us? It is almost as if, because these relationships are one-sided, we are setting ourselves up for the frustration that sets in when the phone will not stop ringing or the tape deck eats the cassette that we created especially to keep us happy on road trips or through long bouts of stop and crawl traffic.
Out of frustration over what cannot be controlled, we allow ourselves to be disappointed. We feel betrayed when the television stops working or our car breaks down. By getting angry, we are allowing those objects to control us.
Perhaps some people talk out loud in order to stay sane from the pressures of life pulling in different directions. Maybe these love/hate relationships people form with inanimate objects are healthy reflections of the simplicity of nature, the instinctual persistence of the quest for understanding inborn in many people. Or maybe not.
All I do know is that although my laundry may not really have fangs and the guests on Ricki Lake may not be able to hear me yell at them from my living room, I will maintain my relationships with the inanimate world with pride.
