Okay. I'm thinking I need a bunch of skeptics here. [View all]

I want to start by saying I'm willing to believe in certain, shall we say, unprovable things. But that's not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about the proliferation of some kinds of things.

You know how wire hangers multiply? But not the plastic ones. And you've noticed that socks disappear. It's generally thought that they disappear in dryers, leading some people to conclude that there are black holes of some kind in dryers. More on this in another paragraph. But the truth is, as my physicist son once said, that socks are the larval form of hangars.

Okay. Back to dryers. I have proof that there might well be some kind of black hole devices that use dryers to transport things from one place to another. Once I had a green towel materialize in a load of sheets and towels. It was a green one I'd never seen before. I never bought a green towel, trust me. But I kept it for years. Another time, some years after the towel, a pair of men's slacks showed up in my dryer. At first I thought they belonged to my brother, who lived with us, and did his own laundry. But he denied they were his. So I checked with the other males in the household, two sons and a husband. All denied ownership of the slacks. But they fit one son. So he took them.

Now, given all that background, I'm asking for help in solving my problem about pencil sharpeners. For two years I had an office. I stocked it with (among other things) a battery operated pencil sharpener. And it worked quite nicely, thank you very much. During that time, I shared the office will several other people on an ad hoc basis. At the end of the two years, when I went to close the office, there were now three battery operated pencil sharpeners. And none of the people I'd shared the office with said they'd brought one in to the office. So I'm asking, how is it that pencil sharpeners reproduce?

It makes sense that socks are the larval form of hangers. After all, you never find baby hangers, and you never find the hangers in the act of . . . well you know. But pencil sharpeners?

Oh, and there was an extra pillow that on one admitted to bringing to the office.