The kinked garden hose

Fifty feet of green vinyl, coiled into a ring just wide enough to hang from a single nail beside the garage door. Uncoil it and it fights you the whole way, remembering every twist it held over the winter, the way a folded letter remembers its creases no matter how flat you press it later. By June it has usually surrendered, gone loose and cooperative, only to seize up again the moment the weather turns. There is a particular kink, always in the same three feet near the nozzle, that no amount of straightening seems to cure permanently; it returns like a grudge. Coiled properly, in even loops with the twists worked out before storage, a hose will serve several owners of the house it waters. Coiled carelessly, in the hurried figure eight of someone who has somewhere else to be, it will fight every subsequent use. The difference between these two fates is entirely a matter of the last five minutes before you walk away, which is true of more household objects than anyone likes to admit. Neighbors coil differently, too, and you can tell a great deal about a person's Sunday afternoon from the tightness of their loops. Some hoses get reels. Most do not, and hang instead in whatever shape their last use left them, a soft green comma against the siding.

Beatrice Womack