I have never understood this: Why exactly do people leave the clothespins or clothes pegs/clips in the line after taking in the dried clothes? It is a puzzle I have tried solving and failed and still remains one of the unsolved ones.

I myself collect them along with the clothes and store them in a tiny basket. When I need them next they are always ready and waiting for me, snug as a bug in a rug (Okay, I got a bit carried away there) in the same basket where I left them last. Of course, where could they have gone, not being living things, also not having legs to walk, or wings to fly. Besides, no one else is interested in them enough for them to be misplaced.

Such is not the case with earphones. They evoke interest and get misplaced too. The Second Born who is home at present, borrows and then leaves them somewhere or other. Okay, he did this only once and it had hilarious results.

Of the two earphones I own, I prefer using a particular one. I gave the other, which had come with the cell phone, to the Second Born  for his use. But one day it just disappeared off the face of the earth. Or so it seemed to us for it could be found nowhere. He then started sharing the one I use.

One day my sister and brother-in-law came over to collect some things they had left in the spare bedroom. When he came downstairs, the b-i-l that is, had a set of earphones in his hand. Whose is this, he asked. It was lying on the bed.

OMG! I said. The missing link….er umm… I mean the missing earphones! So that is where he left it. Grr… Fancy being so forgetful. But, how is it that I hadn’t notice it lying on the bed when I went in to put some clothes away?! Ahh well, anyway I am glad it has been found. Now he can leave my earphones alone.

Did you notice how happy and relieved I sounded? Perhaps not. After all these are words on a page and cannot convey true feelings. But believe you me, I was happy plus mighty relieved. I will not shy away from saying it. I am a very my-mine and also leave-my-things-alone sort of person

My ‘peaceful’ computer time comes after dinner time. That’s when I listen to songs, play online scrabble, generally waste time and am inspired to write posts to bore readers. But as you have noticed, first and foremost, and a MUST, is listening to music. Later that day, when the golden hour (as far as I am concerned) arrived and I opened the Asus laptop, my hand automatically went to the right to pick up the earphones and met nought. There was a book named Birds of the Indian Subcontinent, a mouse (not the live one that cats love but the other kind), a strip of my tablets for hypertension and… well, nothing more. NO EARPHONES.

I pushed back my chair and purposefully walked to the head of the stairs, the picture of righteous indignation if ever there was one and called out, “SECOND BORN!!!!!!!! WHERE ARE MY EARPHONES?!!!!!!!!!!”

“Oh sorry, Mom. I left it in the spare bedroom!” said a contrite voice.

Huh? What?!!! Wait! Let me see. Wasn’t a set found there this morning? I added two to two and arrived at the answer. It’s always four in case you are wondering. I deduced that the excitement in the morning had been for nothing. It hadn’t been the missing earphones, but the very much not-missing set of earphones which had been re-discovered and assumed to be the missing one. I quickly retrieved my property from the L&M into whose custody it had been given for safekeeping and went back to my room.

Egad. I have (notoriously) digressed TOO VERY FAR from the topic I started out with. Clothespins. And why they need to be left out in the open. Let me get back to it pronto: Why do people leave them thingamabobs on the line after taking in the dried clothes?

If it is to find them with ease the next time you put clothes out to dry, wouldn’t it be easier to collect them and store them somewhere, like in a tin or basket? If the argument is that it is to save time, then I can only say, ‘Stuff and nonsense!’. What about the time you spent pinning it back when there was no need to? What about the next time you want to put the clothes out to dry, when you have to unpin each one of them before you put out the clothes. Gotcha there.

Leave the question of time aside. Do you know why it is the stupidest thing to leave the pins on the line? My dear Sirs and Madames. we live in the tropics. Why do you want to bake the poor things in the sun even when there are no clothes to dry and make them so brittle as to disintegrate in your hands when you use them next? Unless of course you have money to waste and/or buying clothespins is your hobby?

After about 112 times of repeating the above logic (any more and you’d be branded as a nag, never mind that THEY themselves repeat things like about a million times even when you have not missed doing what has been asked of you) to the man in my life and failing to impress upon him the need to bring it back in, I had almost concluded that it is a man versus women issue and simply started collecting the pins left outside.

Then I noticed it wasn’t a gendered response. Leaving the clothespin on the line was a universal activity. Apparently everyone does it. That is, everyone except Shail. Oh well. I have always maintained I am different. 😉

©Shail Mohan 2017