Murphy the Lawgiver : ‘Nature,’ Says the Cynical Pundit, ‘Always Sides With the Hidden Flaw’

THE FIRST 1989 calendar I have received, perhaps prophetically, is Price Stern Sloan’s “Murphy’s Law 1989 Calendar: If Anything Can Go Wrong, It Will.” There is no better way to face up to a new year than with Murphy’s inviolable precepts in mind.

The obvious corollary is that “almost everything can go wrong and probably will.”

Come New Year’s Day, however, I will have also received my annual RAND think-tank calendar, each month offering some inspirational message from one of our great thinkers, scientists, scholars, politicians or poets, and that is the lamp that I hope will guide my way.

But I’m not sure that I won’t avoid more pitfalls by attending to Murphy’s Law, its numerous corollaries and various other succinct precepts provided by mechanics, plumbers, cardsharps, technicians, sinners and athletic coaches.

I also own a book called “Murphy’s Law and Other Reasons Why Things Go Wrong!” (also by Price Stern Sloan) and another titled “1,001 Logical Laws” by John Peers (Doubleday).

The wisdom encapsulated in these two volumes is just as useful and a great deal more accessible than whatever truths can be extracted from the abstruse cerebrations of Plato, Kant, Spinoza, Emerson and their ilk.

The calendar’s cover shows a car straddling the two ends of a rising drawbridge while the mast of a boat in the water below is about to broadside the car. What could go wrong has gone wrong.

Each month has an illustrated law. The law for August: “No matter which side of the door the cat or dog is on, it is the wrong side.”

The illustration shows a man in a chair, drink at his side, listening to headphones, reading the paper. The cat is scratching at the door to get out; the dog is pawing at the glass door to get in.

The law for January: “If you wait for a repairman, you’ll wait all day. If you go out for five minutes, he’ll arrive and leave while you’re gone.”

The book quotes several laws attributed to Murphy: “Nothing is as easy as it looks.” “Everything takes longer than you think.” “If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage is the one that will go wrong.” “Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.”

The presidential race has taught us the truth of these laws: “There comes a time in a man’s life when he must rise above principle.” And: “No matter how you slice it, it’s still baloney.”

A couple of my favorites come from sports: “You win some, you lose some, and some get rained out, but you gotta suit up for them all.” And from football: “Life is a series of incomplete passes.”

My favorite of all may be Agnes Allen’s Law, which was formulated by Agnes Allen, wife of Frederick Lewis Allen: “Almost everything is easier to get into than out of.” Keep that in mind when you agree to do some good work at some future date.

There is of course a taint of cynicism in these sayings, wisdom being essentially cynical.

The master cynic La Rochefoucauld is quoted: “A kind heart is of little value in chess.”And Finley Peter Dunne advised: “Trust everybody, but always cut the cards.”

Some are profound: “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.” And “Sex has no calories.” Also, “Reality is a hypothesis.” Or, “Things aren’t really what they seem.”

Though Murphy is generally thought to be anonymous, the book “Murphy’s Law” identifies him as Capt. Ed Murphy, a development engineer who was working at Edwards Air Force Base on experimental crash research. The story is told by George E. Nichols, who was running the project for Northrop. “Frustration with a strap transducer, which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gauge bridges, caused (Murphy) to remark: ‘If there is any way to do it wrong, he will’--referring to the technician who had wired the bridges at the lab.” Nichols repeated the remark, and the rest is history.

And Smith’s Law? Never trust a strap transducer--or any other kind of ducer.