I’ve long suspected that coat hangers are intelligent beings – that conspire together to frustrate human beings.

Often, I’ve wrestled with them. At times, I’ve been defeated by them. (Muzzle that smile. This confession does not come easily for me.)

Regardless the name, the coat hangers in my home hold all manner of clothing items. At any given moment, various hangers may hold nothing. Empty hangers are supposedly available for clothes that have been in use or have just come out of the wash, and need to be hanged.

I say “supposedly available” for two reasons. First, coat hangers have a maddening habit of multiplying and vanishing. Unfortunately, you never know which approach they will take, but you can always reckon you’ll either (a) not be able to find a hanger at all or (b) have way too many extras.

This would be okay if, once you located an empty hanger, you could actually use it. But the one thing these little creatures love more than multiplying and vanishing is conspiring.

Here’s what happens, based on footage from secret surveillance cameras:

Several neatly hung hangers see a hand coming toward them. Somehow, they know precisely which hanger that hand will grab. In the second before the “snatch,” the hangers intertwine so that the chosen hanger is inextricably linked to several others. No amount of creative jiggling will free this hanger – until the unwitting person decides to give up and select a different one. Immediately, the holding hangers release the held hanger, and it plunges to the floor. The others then regroup, latching onto a different hanger just as the person’s hand reaches to grasp it.

Okay, so I made up the part about the surveillance cameras. And the “intelligent beings” business is iffy, too. But what irritates me so much about coat hangers is that they irritate me so much.

So maybe you can understand why I was perplexed the day I stood in the laundry room, yanking on a hopelessly tangled hanger, and the word “thanksgiving” came to mind.

“It’s not Thanksgiving,” I muttered.

Then, a surprising idea barreled in like a bumper car, knocking my mutter out of the way: Thanksgiving isn’t a day. It isn’t even an attitude. Thanksgiving is an action.

I cannot ever recall a time when thoughts of coat hangers caused a deep sense of gratitude to well up in me. At that moment, I certainly did not feel thankful for them. And I had no desire to recall the verse from Ephesians 5 that came to mind anyway, urging:

Always give thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (v. 20 CEB).

Frustrated, I let go of the uncooperative hanger. It clattered to the floor.

Since God had me over a barrel, using scripture and all, I reluctantly told him, “Thank you for coat hangers.” Trying another hanger, I added, “Thank you for closets with clothes in them – and for pieces of wire and plastic that do help keep clothes available and neat. Thank you that you provide these hangers: I rarely have to buy them.”

By then I was on a roll. “Thank you for arms to reach for hangers and hands to grasp them. Thank you for the family members who wear the clothes these hangers hold.”

Funny thing: By the time I finished saying, “thank you,” I was truly thankful.

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Adapted from “Snapshot 37: The Coat Hanger Conspiracy,” in Deborah’s book, Focused Living in a Frazzled World: 101 Snapshots of Life.

Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay