The Third Person

You know that objects aren’t supposed to move, on their own. But have you noticed that, when you aren’t looking, when you leave the room, or even when you’re in the room….they’ve moved, behind your very back? 

And don’t believe that things get misplaced. Doesn’t happen. They go missing. And don’t accept the suspicion that you weren’t paying enough attention. Couldn’t be.  You knew where you put it!  My God, you must trust yourself to recognize that a Rearrangement took place. If an object isn’t where you put it, that is an event called destiny because either the object has taken on a life of its own OR someone unwelcomed has moved it. In either case Fate has approved these acts which you have not invited into your life. And don’t deny it; each of us is subject to destiny. 

Val and I live alone…For the record, just the two of us.  

We use a typical yellow soft-side, green scrapy-side kitchen sponge  which belongs on the divider between the two sinks. Val assures me that to prevent mildew she squeezes it out and puts it on the divider. I must never leave it in the sink. To avoid that venial sin, I never use it.  But still it works its way into the bottom of the sink and is soggy the next AM when Val uses it. Her left eye brow arches when I plead that I touched it not!  She knows the sponge cannot squiggle like an inch worm.  One day, when we agreed that this does not rise to the level of disagreement, simultaneously we came to understand that there must be a Third Person living with us. 

It wasn’t just that. I found the wedge of a broken dish, from a Fiesta-ware saucer under the living room sofa when I was looking for one of Val’s earring posts. What in God’s name is a slice of dish doing under the sofa?  How did it get there? Incomprehensible to both of us.  We look at each other. Where’s the rest of the dish? Yes, no question, a third person is here. 

First thing one morning I walked out front to see the sunrise, and our garage door was wide open. I checked it the prior night like I always do, and it was closed. Val had gone to bed before me, so it couldn’t have been her.  Someone opened it during the night. Someone had to push the door opener with a palpable finger because garage doors don’t open by themselves. 

And how did Val’s best eye glasses come to hide themselves under the driver’s seat in my car which she never drives. For three weeks they WENT MISSING. Val had to wear her Rite Aid Readers. After two weeks she said, “The only place I haven’t looked is your car…” Then, “Everything is revealed.”  When things go missing like that, it’s special, it’s destiny. Objects do not spontaneously run away and hide. A third person must be behind this. 

It is especially unravelling when something that effects your life moved without your biding. Like the Thermostat…a thermostat doesn’t change temperatures on its own.  A finger has to poke the arrows up or down. So, who put the temperature at 78 in the winter, or 64 in the summer. Val, a serious conservationist, assures me see didn’t do it. And I have no reason not to believe that what she said isn’t true. I know that I, a serious skin-flint, would never do it. I trust Val; we’ve been together longer than Apple has been making computers. There is no other possible explanation. The third person is screwing with us.

By now you want to ask me, “Well, what does the person look like.” I never have gotten I lasting image. Whenever I’m about to get a clear shot, it turns, and it’s as thin as a strip of molecules. Once I was sure he looked like David Niven. Once when I had an apprehension of her presence and quickly jerked my head, I was certain she resembled Eve Arden from “Our Miss Brooks.”  That I can’t put together a composite doesn’t diminish her reality, nor the importance of her role. She is so inconspicuous and evasive as to be nearly imperceptible. She carefully wants recognition only by the consequences left for us.

I know you’ve had the experience. You’re reading a Wikipedia entry on your lap top and are taking notes.  You elbow your pen off the desk as you move your mouse. It hit the floor at your foot, and you should be able to bend over, reach down to pick it up.  But you can’t see it. You have to rise from the chair, get down on all fours, and see that it is under the table braces. The pen couldn’t possibly have rolled that far because the clip would have stopped it from rolling. The inconvenience has a cause. The third person’s function is that of prankster, just enough to make you feel pissy.

We know cellphones don’t move. They’re too smart to move. I always put my Iphone in the top drawer of the dining room bureau. I often use it to call my wife when her phone is hiding under a crossword puzzle or sudoku somewhere. I know if Val used it to find her phone when I’m outside, that she would put it back because I have no reason not to believe that she wouldn’t do that. One day Val has gone off visiting, and when I come in from the backyard, I turn to the drawer to get in sync with the outside world==my emails, text messages, my telephone, my google, books Amazon knows I need to buy….my intelligent phone is not there…..i am disconnected from the entire outside world. You know how this feels, don’t you? The desperate hunt begins--now every minute away from this external organ of my mind, becomes an hour, every careful consideration about the location of this device, more essential than my gallbladder, becomes a frantic, preposterous guess. Because my mind is weakened by being withdrawn from the device, my moves from room to room are a series of spasms. I’ve looked everywhere. Deep inside I don’t believe I will ever find it. It’s gone for good and I no longer exist! 

Instinctively, I retrace my steps through the rooms, again, hoping that the sullen rhythm of my steps will summon up the one event that can save me…..a miracle! I reenter the living room, out of the corner of my eye I see a pile of devices on the TV console….my integral phone, my world….alas, no, I mistook the remote for my heart’s desire….but wait I am prompted to look again, there seems to be three remotes and we only have two…it’s my cellphone buried alive beneath the remotes.  I am one with the device. I live again. I have no reason not to believe that Val didn’t move my cellphone to the table. I have no reason not to believe that the third person did move it so I could experience a transcendent, heart-thumping adrenaline rush. I have no reason not to believe that I didn’t hear him whisper in my ear, “It’s over there, where you just looked, my precious, you puppet.”

These inanimate objects and the Third Person are complicit to drive us to the edge. These are the pieces of our lives--the objects, devices, events, unbidden consequences that never leave us….never leave us even when we can’t find them…all of them will return to us because they are waiting for us, they belong to us and need us in order to exist. Objects, devices, events, consequences have their way with us.  But they never would leave us.  We are theirs.  But be Patient, my friends, the Third Person will always let you in on the joke after he’s had his fun.