My rather-less-than-successful powers of mind control

Inanimate objects are often very trying. You cannot reason with them. You cannot see that they feel guilty for messing up your day and made you late. You cannot convince them to feel guilty by telling them how much they have messed up your day. You cannot throw them off a balcony unless you really, really, really don't need them anymore (rather like human beings). You cannot make them see how virtuous it was of you to stay up very late working with them because they are a project that had to get done today. They are either good, or they are bad. There is no middle ground. They love you or they hate you.

I often try to trick traffic lights. Into letting me through. I do it by indicating to them that my expectations of them are very low, that I recognize how they generally choose to act out of spite, and that I am not bothered but in fact resigned to their unpleasant ways. Like this: "Oh, imaginary passenger," I say gravely (or if there is a passenger I say it to them). "I know that you see a green light up in the distance, but do not be fooled. I know this green light of old. It always turns yellow and red at the last moment so as to refuse to allow me through it. I have accepted it as a fact of life, and you should too. Then neither of us will be disappointed when we fail to make it through this light."

(Because that is how I talk to passengers in my car.)

This works surprisingly often. I think what happens is that the lights decide to fool me. They would rather, as someone says in a book I like a lot, disappoint me pleasantly than not at all. Seeing that I expect them to be contrary, they swiftly change tactics and try to irritate me by remaining green long enough for me to slide through. They don't know it secretly pleases me. They don't know that I am CUNNINGLY MANIPULATING them.

On the other hand, I never win the battle with the baby name book. Never once. The baby name book defeats me every time and it doesn't matter what I do with it.

The baby name book is an excellent resource, and since nobody in my nuclear family is having any children these days (though, family, if you want to start, I will gladly surrender the baby name book to you. And buy your children a present or two), I am the only one who needs the baby name book. I need it every time I start writing a story, so I can view my name options and decide whether I'm choosing to care about what their names mean.

And I can never find the damn thing. I always hide it very craftily on my bookshelf, the bookshelf of all my books that virtually no one messes with ever except for me, the bookshelf that no one but me cares about. I try to hide it amongst books that only I am interested in, like between Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions and The Stranger Wilde: Interpreting Oscar. You'd think it would be safe enough. Sometimes when I am feeling cynical, I go all the way and hide it behind books that only I am interested in.

It doesn't matter, though. The baby name book doesn't want to be on my bookshelf; and it always migrates back out into the house. Every time I go to look for the baby name book, it's gone from where I left it, and nobody in the house remembers having seen it at any point, and they all deny having moved it, so it's most mysterious and inexplicable. Either the baby name book has a mind of its own, or else God is trying to tell me to stop writing stories. Or perhaps to stop greedily hiding the baby name book. Or perhaps to think up names by myself instead of using the baby name book as a crutch. Or something.