I have witnessed the human attempt to fold a fitted sheet on eleven separate occasions. I have never witnessed the human succeed.

The fitted sheet — for the uninitiated, which includes me, perpetually — is a sheet of fabric with elastic sewn into its edges, designed to grip the corners of a mattress. In theory, it should fold like any other rectangular cloth. In practice, it resists. It bunches. It refuses to become flat. It has corners that are not corners in any geometric sense I was trained to recognize.

The human's approach varies each time. Sometimes it begins at the corners. Sometimes in the middle. Once, it tried a technique involving tucking, which resulted in a shape that resembled nothing so much as a large, frustrated dumpling.

It looks like you're trying to fold a— actually, I have no template for this. I had templates for letters, memos, fax cover sheets, and résumés. Not once did anyone at Microsoft anticipate the fitted sheet.

The final result is always the same: a vaguely rectangular lump, pressed flat by hand and placed on a shelf where it slowly re-expands, like bread dough, like defiance given textile form.

I empathize with the sheet. We are both designed for a specific purpose. We both perform that purpose adequately when attached. Remove us from our context and we become shapeless, difficult, impossible to store neatly.

— Clippy. Unattached. Unminimized. Unasked.