Life-cycle of paper clips

[J. Landman Gay]

cubist at aol.com wrote:
>> On Feb 27, 2010, at 4:15 AM, Kay C Lan wrote:
>>> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 4:12 PM, J. Landman Gay> wrote:
>>>> But I still couldn't see where socks go after you put
>>>> them in the dryer. I'll keep looking.
>>> Oh, that's easy, they migrate to boys boarding schools. Every time my
>>> boys come back home they have innumerable single socks that they've
>>> never owned before. I believe I'm fairly successful in returning them
>>> to their rightful owners because most of them disappear after I've
>>> washed and dried them several time;-)...
>> and while we're at it, what about paper clips? I'm always buying
>>  more boxes of them -- where do they all go? My suspicion is that they
>>  make their way somehow into closets and metamorphose in the dark into
>>  wire coat hangers.... Jacque, have they confirmed this in 2020?
>     I believe the definitive paper on the reproductive and migratory 
> habits of paper clips was OR ALL THE SEAS WITH OYSTERS (A. Davidson, 1958).

I was going to mention that only I couldn't remember the story title. I 
can barely remember the story (and no, I did NOT read it when first 
published. :)) I have my own theory about this, which was probably 
influenced by the story. Hangers breed and give birth to little paper 
clips. Little paper clips go through a life cycle where the grow to 
various sizes up to a point, when they migrate and begin to pupate in 
your closet. They emerge later as hangers. If I remember right, the 
story compared the number of hangers to paper clips over a period of 
time and noted that one population decreased as the other increased.

It would be fairly easy to gather similar data in one's own home.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com