Solved mysteries

- Finally I discovered where socks and other small oddments disappear to in the wash. This had puzzled me for some time, as I knew I wasn't leaving them in the washer or the dryer, and I knew they did not drop down behind. When I pulled a sheet out of the closet recently, a sock shook out of the corner. Aha! Of course, while fitted sheets remain the prime abductors of small odds and ends, they are by no means the only offenders. I remember now that once, as we were walking through an airport, Michael pulled off his sweater and a small unmentionable fell to the floor. How it hitchhiked all the way to the airport without his knowledge I will never know. But at least now I know to shake out every item thoroughly before putting it away.

- I also figured out why cars tend to creep forward when stopped at a light, a phenomenon which has highly annoyed me for some time. Either they creep up behind me, making me nervous of a collision, or they creep away in front of me, leaving an ever-widening gap that makes it look as if I stopped too short and potentially irritating the cars behind me. I couldn't figure out why people would do this, as they aren't liable to cross the light any sooner and it simply wastes gas to gun the engine. But my brush with the rental car after our last accident cleared this one up for me. This car was an automatic, and I found that when you lift your foot ever so lightly off the brake, the car creeps forward because the engine idles with a slight forward motion. Of course you don't switch an automatic to neutral when you're stopped at a light. So that's why it keeps happening: almost everybody else out there is driving an automatic now.