Author's note (me. I'm the author): I wrote this back in 2021, and apparently never posted it anywhere except on Humor Outcasts. Murphy's Laws probably cover that.
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 Murphy’s Law is very clear on certain points. Most of us are familiar with Murphy’s Law #1, which states that if anything can possibly go wrong, it will. There’s also Murphy’s Corollary #14, which says that if Mark Hunter attempts any manner of mechanically based activities, Murphy’s Law #1 is immediately in effect.

Then there’s Murphy’s Law #27, which was added to the list in 1923 by Murphy’s grandson, G.C. Murphy. I discovered Murphy’s Law #27 several years ago, when I paid off my car. It's the one that states, “Immediately after making the very last payment on something, it will break.”

I looked forward to paying off my car with mixed feelings. My car had been very good to me, and I didn’t want to see the poor thing fall apart just because I didn’t owe anything on it. Still, I figured as long as the cost of repairs didn’t exceed the payments, I’d break even.

Maybe “break” was a bad way to put it.

At the time I had a foreign car, a Nissan. Well, maybe foreign. Since many foreign cars are assembled in the U.S., and many American cars are assembled from parts made in other countries, the only way you can be sure of having an American vehicle these days is to build it yourself.

That I wasn’t prepared to do – see Murphy’s Corollary #14.


The first winter after I paid it off, the gas line froze. But in its defense, I don’t handle winter well, either.

 

I’ve owned one other foreign car, but it was made in France. The French car started almost every single time I turned the key – but whether it would then go was a crapshoot. It was a safe car, because cars that won’t leave the driveway rarely get into accidents.

I’ve also owned Fords, Chevys, Pontiacs, and a funky looking white Dodge Omni that my ex-wife sacrificed to the gods of utility poles. I have only one real requirement: They should start when I turn the key, and go where I steer. That’s about it.

My Nissan did that. Then, two months before it would be paid off, I was surprised by a letter from my friendly bank, informing me my loan had matured, and they would like all the rest of their money. Now.

I had no idea loans matured. I thought they came out of the bank fully grown.

I sent the money, then the bank sent me another letter to inform me I overpaid, and here’s my refund. Wasn’t that nice of them, to spend $2.67 on paper, envelope and stamp so I could get my $1.43? They were probably imagining the look on my face when I opened the envelope.

Now, from the moment I sent in that last check I had the feeling a huge, steel toed shoe was hovering over my head, ready to drop. To my surprise, the doors didn’t fall off when I sent the check. The engine didn’t explode when I received the refund. By the time the title arrived, I was so nervous I scheduled an oil change, just so I could say I’d taken care of the routine maintenance and was in no way at fault for whatever was about to happen.


The car I bought after the Nissan. This was taken after it was paid off.

 

As I sat in the waiting room, contemplating the pluses and minuses of buying a moped, the maintenance guy popped his head in and said cheerfully, “Your car is done!”

 My voice rose five octaves. “Oh my gosh! It’s done? Finished? Over? What happened? I need to be with it, to say goodbye–“

“No, no, you don’t understand – I mean, we’re done changing the oil.”

“Oh … thank goodness, I thought –“

“And you’re going to need new brakes soon.”

I refer you back to Murphy’s Law #27.

“How soon?” I asked. “A few months? A year or so?”

“Within two weeks, unless you live for thrills and close calls. You could buy an anchor, but depending on what it hooks onto, that could cause more harm than good.”

The new brakes – and I doubt I need to tell you this – cost the same as a car payment. But that’s hardly surprising:

Murphy’s Law is very clear.

(Postscript: My Nissan was later demolished by a hit and run driver. My next car was paid off, then totaled by a hit and stay driver. In my current vehicle, I twitch whenever I see any other cars come close. I’m sure that’s covered by another of Murphy’s Laws.)

My wife in our current car. Which we just paid off, so … it’s just a matter of time.


http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

 

Have you ever looked back at something you did, and realized you’d been warned all along not to do it?

I don’t mean like when you were a kid, and your mom told you not to go out without your hat and gloves. Although come to think of it, sorry, mom: My mottled, aching hands tell me you were right. No, I’m talking about when you get those little signs, those portents that, in retrospect, stick out like giant stop signs.

Our plan was to go to southern Missouri, to see my wife’s family and visit with her friends. The friends are largely alumni of Emily’s Girl Scout camp, Latonka, where for many years she went as a camper and then worked. It’s the basis for (and receives half the profits from) my novel The No-Campfire Girls.

This trip required driving a thousand miles over a four day period in late December. What could possibly—well, you know something went wrong, or I wouldn’t have written this.

 

Spoiler alert: Emily did get to spend some time with her family.

 

I got the time off work, but felt guilty about it because right afterward one of my coworkers resigned, making scheduling a problem. Early in December, Emily got sick with what might have been a mild case of strep throat. Later my oldest daughter and one of the grand-kids came down with a much more than mild case of strep throat. (The other grand-kid came later.) A week before we were to leave, the dentist told me I needed a filling replaced as soon as possible, plus a crown on another tooth. Three days before we were to leave, I was cleaning my glasses when they literally fell apart. And I literally don’t use the word literally very often: They just broke into two pieces. Then my grand-kid got scarlet fever. Friggin' scarlet fever.

All the while I kept watching the weather forecast.

I’m accused of obsessing about the weather, and it’s true; but when you’re about to drive five hundred miles through three states in winter, then hopefully return, it’s a reasonable obsession. In this case, we had a one day window to get there, after which a winter storm would hit the whole region, clearing just in time for a one day window to get back.

What could possibly—ah, never mind.

Emily was better by then, and although it was a cold trip all the way down, that only counted when I had to get out of the car for gas or the dog’s bathroom needs. (As for my bathroom needs, I held it. Kidding! But I didn’t join the dog by a tree.) That was Friday.

On Saturday the temperature got up to 69 degrees in southeast Missouri. That’s not a typo, you northern Indiana people. We ran some errands before the party, and were driving around in t-shirts with the windows down. It was glorious, right up until about the time the tornado sirens went off.

Surely you expected that?

 

It even got a degree warmer than this.

 blob:null/48fa92d1-a7ed-4434-933a-8069f64d8ec9

There was a confirmed touchdown, although safely to the south of us. At about the same time, starting on a line twenty or thirty miles north, the rest of the Midwest was being socked in by an ice and snow storm. But we’d expected all of it—except the tornado—and although it was a little odd watching lightning in December, we really did have a good time with Emily’s parents and at the party.

This despite the fact that by the time the party started, the temperature had dropped thirty degrees. As the storm progressed south the temperature dropped close to fifty degrees in twelve hours, and if you think my car doors got iced shut, you’re right.

But we were there, and had some time before we had to go anywhere, and everything was just swell until Emily developed severe pain from a urinary tract infection. It was bad enough that we decided to go back a day early, which was totally not inside my weather window.

Still, a lot of dedicated highway personnel had the roads in good shape by the time we left Sunday afternoon. We passed some wrecks along the side of the road and, just to punctuate the point that we should have seen the “don’t do it” signs, we hit a discarded semi tire tread in Illinois. That was an exciting after-dark moment. But we got home, where at 9 p.m. Sunday night it was three degrees. For those who didn’t do the math, that was a 66 degree temperature change for us.

Sure, I got hypothermia unloading the car. But it was good that we’d traveled and charged up the car’s battery, because it got down to minus 9 later that night.

 

The sad part is that I've been colder.

 

 

It was a couple of days later when people who were at the party, including Emily and I, finished incubating our upper respiratory infections.

So, what have we learned from this? Don’t travel in winter? Be prepared? Watch for signs and portents?

I’m gonna go with all of the above.

 

 

I decided to prove I was over my sinus infection yesterday by going out and doing four hours of yard work. Even better, I have a brand new hedge trimmer that's tiny and lightweight, so I could pretend I was swinging around a heavy tool but not get overworked.

First, I'm not over the sinus infection.

 

Second, no matter how lightweight your hedge trimmer is, swinging it around for four hours after not doing that work all year WILL lead to screaming muscle and back pain.

 

This has been your lesson for the day.

 

 

 

 

(You might be hearing something new from my column soon, thanks to Kendallville Mall. Stay tuned!)

http://www.4countymall.com/mark-hunter---slightly-off-the-mark/a-good-day-having-written

 

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

 

 

It was mid-August, 2014 when I first learned about a great opportunity to sign with a big, nation-wide traditional publisher.

 

Six months ago. The beginning of my half year long nightmare.

 

No, not writing the book itself. Writing is a joy, and sometimes the only thing that gets me through horrible life events like illness, election campaigns, and winter. But I made a major mistake, back in August. When I first started corresponding with the editors of Arcadia Publishing, I made a joke about how a February deadline was plenty of time, as long as nothing went wrong.

 

You don’t make fun of Batman’s tights. You don’t kick Chuck Norris’ pickup truck. And you don’t spit in the face of Murphy’s Law.

 

It’s a miracle that we were only four days late delivering the first draft, after which my wife and I collapsed into mutual balls of physical and mental exhaustion. The dog was fine, though.

 

Images of America: Albion and Noble County is a book by both of us (me and Emily, not me and the dog). It required tracking down old photos about—well, the title should tell you—(the collecting was done by both of us), and a whole lot of time scanning the photos into a computer under very exacting standards (by her), followed by research and writing (by me). I probably spent the most hours on it, but she did the hardest work. Researching history and writing stuff isn’t exactly work to me. I mean, it can be hard, and time consuming, and frustrating, and exhausting … okay, I guess it is work. But it’s work I like to do.

 

All would have been well except for Murphy’s Law, which quite clearly states: “Anything that possibly could go wrong, will”. Ah, that crazy Murphy, the eternal optimist.

 

In one of the very first e-mails I sent to William Wallace of Arcadia, I mentioned that my wife had caught one of those nasty summer colds. (You know William Wallace from Braveheart, of course.) It should have served as a warning. By the time I was handed off to the regional editor, Maggie Bullwinkel, I had to tell her things were getting rocky.

 

This would be a good time to point out that working with the people of Arcadia was great. They were nothing but helpful and encouraging, and even when I missed the deadline and had cover problems, they never yelled at me. (I mean, book cover problems, although I landed under the covers at home several times.) The problem is, for the first time I got a book contract before the book was finished.

 

Over the course of the next six months, one of my daughters landed in the hospital multiple times and was diagnosed with a serious ongoing illness; my grandmother was rushed to the hospital in the middle of a snowstorm; I took my other daughter and one of my grandkids to the doctor, not to mention my wife and I showing up there ourselves multiple times …

 

Well, let’s just boil it down: In a six month period, every single person I know was either hospitalized, injured, in an accident, or became seriously ill. Or all of the above, and sometimes more than once. The only exceptions were the couple of people who are going to write and say, “Hey, you know me and I was fine that whole time!” That’s because they suffered head injuries and lost their memories.

 

Of course, it’s just as possible that I missed someone being well because of the two month long sinus infection that made me feel like the Alien alien was trying to force is way out of my face.

 

It was also during this time that the springs on my garage door broke while I was holding the door handle, slamming me down into the concrete like a crash test dummy. You’d think that kind of force would clear my sinuses. This was before the freezing rain incidents and the snowstorms.

 

It was also during this time that I lost my writing job of twenty-five years, and picked up a new one, which took a little adjustment time. There were holidays too, I think, around December or so. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

 

It was, in short, a nightmarish time of illness, pain, rushing around, stress, and did I mention winter? Still, in the end, we finished the book and got it sent in. So … was it worth it?

 

Yes.

 

Maybe I’ll go into detail on that another time. But it’s one of those funny things about writers: The “having written” part seems to make up for everything else.

 


 

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