Murphy's Law

                “Murphy’s Law” apparently originated in the military of the United States during World War II. Captain Edward A. Murphy, Jr., a U.S. Air Force engineer, is said to be the author of the law. “One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technicians responsible and said, `If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it.’ The contractor’s project manager kept a list of `laws’ and added this one, which he called Murphy’s Law.” Murphy’s Law is said to be, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” Sometimes the words, “and usually does” are added to the saying.

                The latter rendition of Murphy’s Law, “If something can go wrong, it will and usually does” takes place whenever my husband leaves town for a few days. We have lived in Alaska for more than 40 years, and my husband has traveled often for both work and recreation. It seems that every time he leaves, something goes wrong.

                The problems over the years have ranged from water heaters to refrigerators to vehicles to Internet. One Sunday morning when my children and I were getting ready for Church, we discovered that we had no hot water. I went to the garage to investigate and found water flowing out of the water heater all over the garage floor. A neighbor came and hooked a hose to the appliance to carry the water out of the garage, and I proceeded to heat water on the stove in order for my children to have warm water for their baths. The next day I arranged to have another water heater installed.

                Another time I heard terrible noises coming from the refrigerator and feared it was going to stop working. My husband can fix almost any electrical appliance, but he was out of town. I knelt in prayer and asked God to bless my refrigerator until my husband was home to take care of the problem. The appliance lasted for many more years before it had to be replaced.

                At still another time I rolled the pickup truck on a mountain road when my eight-year-old son and I were going for a hike up the mountain. We landed up-side-down on a large bush of some kind and rolled over onto the wheels. We dented a couple of fenders in the roll. Neither of us was hurt because we were both wearing our seatbelts. I was grateful that my husband was out of town for only a few hours that day. He arrived home in time to pull the truck back up to the road under its own power using a winch.

                That same son, as a teenager, rolled a Subaru about the same place. Neither my son nor his passenger was hurt, but the car was totaled. The two of them also replaced a row of mail boxes that was taken out when the car went off the icy road. Once again my husband was out of town, leaving me to handle the details.

                Recently, my husband went on a duck hunt with our two sons. He was gone for four days and three nights. No sooner had he gone than my computer refused to connect to the Internet. I did my best without any results. When he returned home, he was able to get it to connect long enough for me to check the email and post an essay to my blog. Then it was gone again. Of course it happened over the long Labor Day weekend when the technicians were out of the office.

                Murphy’s Law has come into play so often over the years that I am never surprised when something goes wrong when my husband leaves town. I simply handle the situation the best way that I can and go on with my life. This post is written simply to tell my regular readers why there have been no posts over the past few days.