Murphy's Law - an Explanation?
Created | Updated Feb 19, 2004
Large objects are more susceptible to gravity than small ones.
The amount of metal in an object determines how much it is attracted by a magnet. I wonder what substance it is that makes me so much more vulnerable to Murphy's Law than others. Mind you, being nearly 2 metres tall and weighing over 100 kilograms also gives gravity a fairly good grip on me. I have no fear for magnets, however.
But Murphy's Law? I wish they had never invented that!
It affects different people in different ways. In my case it is 'Tangling'. I suffer from objects, mostly stringy, cably or wiry ones, that tangle on me. Everytime I have finished listening to my Walkman I neatly wind the earphones around its body and put it back into its case. Everytime I take it out again, the little cable has twisted itself in an ingenious knot that wouldn't look bad on a Celtic Cross. My shoelaces keep undoing themselves when I walk, but rearrange in an extremely tight knot when I want to take my shoes off.
Our garden hose also has a life of its own. I put it in the shed on a specially designed hook - 'Get a grip on your garden hose with the Hooker', only to find it snaking around the spokes of my bicycle the next day. When I then try to free my bike in a state of mild irritation, the handlebars invariably get caught in the collection of rakes and brooms in the corner of the shed, causing them to fall on my head. That is before I have put my helmet on...
When I have to play somewhere with my band, the others try to keep me as far away from the microphone cables a possible. No matter how well the cables are rolled up and how carefully they are sorted in their flight case, as soon as I take just one end out we have to postpone the gig for at least three hours. Even on stage I have a way making my guitar lead twist around everybody's ankles - 'everybody' includes the drummer and even some members of the audience1.
Last week I had to run from my house in order to catch a bus. I did not catch the bus. Instead I was caught by the doorhandle that managed to snatch the belt of my jeans as I rushed by. And, yes, they were my new jeans and, no, the doorhandle is still intact, it was my jeans that got damaged.
I think I have a large amount of something inside of me that attracts the forces of Murphy's Law. There is no official name for it, yet, so I would like to propose the word 'murph'. I am rather murphy. I tend to be murphous. I am a murphous wreck. Or, as my wife told me when she watched me fight my bike, the garden hose and several broomsticks: 'It takes a lot of murph to do that!'
