Pencils, Pills and Toe-Nails

Exactly how far can a pencil travel? This is not a physics question. Neither is it a new Olympic discipline (although it could be). It is the practical question of what happens when you drop the pencil on the floor and why.

You know the feeling. You reach for a pencil to start the Sudoku puzzle from today’s newspaper. For reasons which cannot be explained by modern science, the pencil moves of its own accord, rolls across the desk and falls towards the floor.

All is not lost. From the great experience that you have gained from playing table tennis, you are confident of your ability to catch it, as it plunges earthwards – but no – the pencil slips past you and lands with a click on the floor, probably shattering the leads internally thoughout its length.

Before you can reach down to pick it up, it continues its journey to escape your clutches and proceeds to roll gently underneath the sofa. Yes – I have a sofa, next to my desk, so I can have a sleep, when studying German vocabulary becomes too hard for me.

Now it’s a question of getting down on your knees in your best jeans. You reach right to the back of the sofa and at the same time, collect up a handful of dust which has assembled since you lost the last pencil.

There you have it with pencils. They’re slow, don’t go far, but are cunning.

But what about pills? You drop one of those and you are really in trouble and I should know. These little swine, they not only slip through your fingers, then gripped by gravity, they always fall to the ground pointing sideways. This works on the same cosmic and logic defying principle that causes a cat to land on its feet and bread to land face downwards, leaving a nasty mark on the carpet.

Back to the pills. Landing on their side, they proceed to roll purposefully at about the same speed as you can chase and then disappear……You took your eye off it, didn’t you. The chances of this ever being found by anything other than the vacuum cleaner are receding by the second.

Writing that off to experience, you take more care with the next pill, still looking around the room, in deadly combat with the little pill that has decided to humiliate you. Yes – It’s personal.

To summarise: Pills – small distance, but fast and ruthless, with an invisibility cloak, straight out of Harry Potter.

How do toe-nails figure in this league table? Clipping toe-nails is a personal business, not to be lightly discussed in public. However, there are important questions to be asked.

You do your best to make sure that the clippings remain in a space where they can be tidied and collected up – I hope that this not too personal or embarrassing.

Then suddenly, the toe nail shoots across the bath room at the speed of light, diagonally from the basin to the corner by the shower. The cursed thing disappears from view. Do this a few times and you would expect to have a little pile of shavings, lodged in the corner – but no. They have gone forever.

At least you are not trying to do something useful with them, like complete a Sudoku puzzle or swallow them to increase the iron in your blood. (I think that they must have a great deal of protein and calcium in them, but I will leave that thought where it is).

So there you have it for Toe nails – theory of relativity defying speeds and general pain in the whatsits.

Pencils, Pills and Toenails – they are all out to get you. So who’s paranoid?