2.21.2013

A [S]Pot of Deduction

If Sherlock Holmes were to look in my kitchen cabinet, he might deduce at least one person in the house is left-handed.

He'd be wrong, but it wouldn't be a bad guess.

That's because right now my pots look like this:


The handles are turned to the left, as they would normally be for someone who uses his or her left hand to grab them or put them away.

But my pots aren't normally turned this way. Before, they looked like this:


But I needed to put the steamer into the cabinet. Since I use the steamer less often than I do the pots, I wanted to put the steamer behind the pots and keep the pots easily accessible. So:


You'll see that the pot handles now stick out of the cabinet. I was standing up at this point, and to save time and effort, I merely reached down (without bending) and turned them the only way their was room for them to go—left. Then I shut the cabinet door.

I would say to Holmes, "Never discount the laziness of the average person."

Of course, the pot behind these has its handle turned to the right. So Holmes would at least correctly come to the conclusion one or more people in the house is right-handed. (In fact, we all are.) None of the other pots has handles that would be likely make a difference under the circumstances. It's a corner cabinet, so there's little to glean from where things are except to say the most-used items are in front, and on the higher shelf, and everything else gets pushed to the back corner where they're more difficult to reach.

A fun little exercise designed to show that even the greatest of detectives could possibly be tripped up by a mild variance of everyday circumstance.

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