Murphy's Law of Engine-Idling Duration

"If you leave your vehicle's engine running during a delay in proceeding (traffic-jam, road construction, accident-resolution, "stuck" red signal-light, etc.), you will be sitting there for many minutes, just wasting gas. The instant you turn the key off and climb out of your seat to stretch, however, THAT'S when the line of traffic will begin moving again, and thus you will have shut off your engine "for nothing", AND you will now be holding up everyone behind you while you hastily hop back into the driver's seat and re-start the engine so that you can move forward again."

I finally took da plunge and bought a second-hand Toyota Prius because I'd eventually had one too many cases of Murphy's Law of Engine-Idling Duration... the Prius automatically shuts down its power during stand-stills, and then uses its electric motor to provide instant mobility as soon as you're ready to go again.

by QuacksO October 20, 2018

Murphy's Law of Spares

"If you buy just one of something, you will surely break it almost immediately, but if you buy one or more "spare" items to have "just in case", your "initial" item will miraculously escape damage no matter how many mishaps you endure, and thus those duplicate items will merely gather dust in the garage or at the back of your desk-drawer."

I have always tried to handle objects gently and carefully, but due to extreme forgetfulness and physical/mental/emotional infirmities, I tend to "be rough on my stuff" --- sitting/stepping on unobserved items, blundering into objects as I'm groggily stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night, soiling items or spilling/dropping stuff, etc., and so I occasionally attempt to "prepare for the future" by acquiring spares of the types of items which I typically seem to damage or break; only prob is that just as soon as I do "lay in for a rainy day" like that, the "currently-being-used" object that I had been procuring said spares for NEVER SEEMS TO ACTUALLY SUSTAIN SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE, and so all of those extras that I'd carefully tucked away just "sit there for decades"... talk about a classic case of "Murphy's Law of Spares"!

by QuacksO November 23, 2018

Murphy's grace

when something that should go wrong does not go wrong

literally the opposite of Murphy's law

it was by murphy's grace that our whole family didn't perish in that midnight fire while we were all asleep

I fell off a mountain but was saved by murphy's grace

by pepsipanda December 3, 2018

Murphy's Law of Post-repair Reassembly

"A device that you're repairing will operate **absolutely perfectly** while you have it taken apart to work on it, but then when you get it all put back together and have all the cabinet-screws re-inserted, THAT'S when the device will decide not to work again."

To lessen the chance of getting "bitten" by Murphy's Law of Post-repair Reassembly, one should double-check everything on a refurbished device before putting it back together again.

by QuacksO March 7, 2019

Murphy's Law of Exceptions

"You can follow an 'unpopular' method or procedure 'till da cows come home' and nothing unusual will ever happen to 'justify' or 'vindicate' your unorthodox actions (and you'll likely get continually criticized by others for your chosen behavior), but then the ONE TIME when you eventually 'cave' and actually DO happen to follow the 'standard' or 'acceptable' protocol, THAT'S the solitary 'rogue occasion' when disaster will happen to strike --- something really bad will happen that would not have occurred if you had simply continued to follow your own 'pet' procedure that had seemed better/safer to begin with!"

My "super-long-term-driving-experienced" aunt had gotten fed up with my "back-seat driver" attempts to be helpful by telling her about vehicles that I'd see moving around fairly near our position when we'd be travelling someplace in her car, and so she had eventually asked me to just keep quiet and let here handle the driving herself. Well, of course, within a day or two, Murphy's Law of Exceptions decided to turn and bite me in da butt --- due to a view-obstructing sidewalk-mounted ad-sign, my aunt didn't notice an approaching car, but I did... naturally, that was the ONE TIME that I **didn't** tell her about it because she'd specifically asked me to keep my trap shut on instances like that, and so I'd ASSUMED (there's that word again!) that she'd observed the vehicle bearing down on the intersection. Well, as you might expect, we crashed, and there were multiple injuries in the other car! Can't win...!

by QuacksO March 9, 2019

Murphy's Law of Customer-Assistance

"You can stroll a store's aisles till Doomsday and never spot da item you want, but then, just as soon as you interrupt a staffperson to ask for help in locating said desirable, THAT'S when you will notice your sought-after item right off!"

While stocking up on food at a Super Walmart, I was looking for larger packages of Armour Vienna sausage so that I could save a few cents per can, but although I had thoroughly searched the surrounding areas on the shelves, I still hadn't found anything bigger than the small six-packs, so I finally asked a nearby employee if there were any of the larger packages in stock, possibly in the back room. Well, just as we were both walking back to the area of the aisle where I'd been looking, THAT'S when I finally spied the 12-packs that were sitting on the very top shelf! Guess that was a classic case of Murphy's Law of Customer-Assistance... ah, well, again, the 12-packs were indeed sitting very high up, so at least that was a plausible excuse for my not having seen them before, especially since the store usually doesn't even expect its customers to notice stuff that's placed 'way up there, anyway; that "lofty" location is merely where they store extra merchandise for replenishing the lower-down shelves when the stock there starts to run low.

by QuacksO May 14, 2019

Murphy's Law of Intersections

"You can 'watch 'n' observe' as carefully as you please while driving and you will still miss your turn-off, and so no amount of continued 'Oh, I'm sure it's just around the next curve" tootling further down the road will bring you to it. But if you do actually decide to turn around and go back to see if you did inadvertently pass your desired intersection, it will of course NOT be 'back there', and you will subsequently find out that you'd been within just a few hundred yards of it at the point when you'd turned around, and so you simply wasted gas and time by backtracking; it had indeed been 'just around the next corner', and so you'd have reached it the first time if you simply hadn't been so gol-durned impatient."

I missed my turn-off during a road-trip because I was carefully watching out for traffic and thus never noticed the side-road I wanted --- classic case of Murphy's Law of Intersections!

by QuacksO May 18, 2019