Today at my coffee shop the barista told me he’s reading a book called The Third Body Problem. I thought this was funny because recently I’ve been hearing stories about the two-body problem in academia–I think we used to call it something different in college, because I remember hearing that Judith Butler refused to go work for some university (maybe even Brown?) because they wouldn’t hire her partner for a professorship and I don’t remember the phrase “two-body problem”–and it seemed like a three-body problem, though rare, could happen if you had a throuple and all of them were professors.
I did assume that his book was not about that particular scenario, since he said it was science fiction.
My best guess was something like…there’s a body shortage and people’s consciousnesses have to time-share three to one meat sack, like morning body, afternoon body, night body. That did not seem to be very accurate based on the barista’s response.
For some reason, this also got me thinking about interchangeable thermos lids and NON interchangeable computer chargers. It did NOT get me thinking about the three-body problem in physics, but after learning about that I thought it was an amazing linguistic coincidence, and was disappointed when Wikipedia suggested that the problem of two married/partnered academics may have been named as a nod to the physics problem.
Computer chargers were already on my mind because I left mine plugged into a wall of the classroom I was teaching in last week, and didn’t realize until 11 pm Friday night when my computer was at 18% (I really thought it was in my bag and that I was just being lazy not getting it out). For some reason this bothered me more than it would have to lose or break something even more expensive (I mean–this was an expensive mistake, even if I get the charger back, because I couldn’t go the whole weekend without my computer, my roommates don’t have compatible computers, and so I went to the apple store and spent $86(!), but it could have been worse…).
I think it seemed worse because there’s a certain futility about it and a certain mockery. As in: futile because I’m so dependent on my laptop that I couldn’t wait to see if my charger was still at the school, so I had to buy a new one regardless of the outcome, and mocking because obviously if apple desired, they could make the power cords for all of their laptops interchangeable.
My roommates and I have a number of canteens/aluminum water bottles floating around our cabinets, from various companies/rafting trips/etc, and this morning I thought I’d had a revelation that all of the screw-in lids fit all of the bottles…but after mere minutes of lambasting Apple for not being as generous as (diverse and multitudinous!) water bottle companies, I realized the cap I thought was screwed in was actually just spinning happily and loosely atop the canteen. Oh.
What are the odds that my (extremely generic and unidentifiable) laptop charger is safely restored to me but that I never have cause to use it (since I suppose it will be demoted to spare) before I need a new laptop (I hang onto them forever, but this one’s from 2014) and the new laptop refuses to even glance in the general direction of my charger?? (Or that I’ll stumble upon someone in the same lost-charger situation I faced right at their moment of need?)
I guess I’d rather have a zero-charger problem than a two-body problem. The solution is surely less emotionally expensive.
