1. Whenever you are driving and see someone mowing their lawn that the mower is right at the road berm or parallel to it at the same moment you go past them? I call this the PPM Syndrome. (Parallel Perpendicular Mower Syndrome)

 

2. Whenever you are driving somewhere and have the radio on that all the songs you don't care for are playing, but when one of your favorites finally comes on, you are either at your destination or a few seconds away. A corollary: The same goes for talk radio. Whenever I make a short trip and have been listening to Rush, Hannity, or Levin (yes, I am a very conservative right wing Republican), at home before leaving, the news is always on and just as I get to my short destination, the talk show starts again. I call this RTSG Syndrome (The Radio Talk Show Gap Syndrome)

 

3. Just as you are closing the door and just leaving to go somewhere the phone rings. Corollary 1: This also is true as soon as you get out of the shower and/or are shaving and your face is full of lather. Corollary 2: It is always a wrong number.

 

4. When you are driving along and there is little or no traffic in the opposite lane, that as soon as you come to someone walking along the road or a partial obstruction on the edge of your lane, that another vehicle is coming and you always meet exactly at the obstruction.

 

5. Whenever you are looking forward to 2 TV programs to watch they are both on at the same time. (This has been superseded by TIVO now). Corollary: Since TIVO can only record 2 programs at once, you cannot watch any other channel unless it is one of the 2 shows recording at the moment. In this case, there is always a 3^rd program you want to watch that is on at the same time as the other 2.

 

6. When you go to a store to get something you really need at the time, it is always out of stock. A hypothetical example is that say you have accidently swallowed a deadly poison and you can only get the antidote at Drug Mart. When you rush to get it, you find an empty gap on the Anecdotes to Deadly Poisons Shelf. You rush to find a stock clerk and they say, "We're temporarily out of this, but I can order it for you. We will receive it in about 2 weeks")

 

7. Whenever you buy something, it always goes on sale the next day.

 

8. You go to a dealer to purchase another new Jeep Wrangler to satisfy your life long Jeep fetish. The only reason you purchased this from this particular dealer is that they offer free maintenance for as long as you own the vehicle, then the dealer goes out of business a year later. (Yeah, this actually happened to me!)

 

9. You take your digital camera to record a once in a lifetime event and just as you get to the highlight scene, the camera battery suddenly goes dead and you forgot to bring a spare. (Yeah, this happened to me also).

 

10. You wait until there is a 0 to 10% chance of rain to reshingle your roof and the moment all the old shingles and tarpaper are removed the roof it rains.

 

11. You wait all afternoon for someone to come and see you and they say they will be there around 1:00 PM in the afternoon. At 6:53 PM, you strip down to your underwear to lounge around the house since it has been a very hot humid day. At 6:58 PM, you hear a "Knock" Knock" Knock" at the door. Guess who it is!

 

12. When you are watching 2 sporting events at the same time on TV and at the commercial break you go to the other channel and there are commercials on that one too at the same time.

 

13. You are at a horse show and showing in the Halter Class in which each horse has to stand still exactly in a certain way. Your horse is standing the correct way and is as still as a statue until the judge gets to you. At this precise moment, the horse starts acting up and rears up resulting in the judge walking away looking down and wagging his head slowly as they go judge the next horse. Then the results are announced:

 

"In first place, number 293, Mildred Finkelhammer

In second place, number 816, Pete Picklebomb

In third place, number 918, Hector Cowbreath

In forth place, number 481, Gwendolyn Shinbender

In last place, number 1313, Mike Tillinghast"

(Then it dawns on you that there were only 4 people in the class)

 

14. After years of taking ineffective prescription medications for your disease, they finally come out with one that finally works for you and restores you to good health and removes the painful symptoms of the disease you have had for years. After a short while, it is suddenly removed from the market by the FDA because an experimental lab rat was fed 1,000 times the regular dosage 5 times a day for 1 year and developed a hangnail.

 

Murphy's Law: "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way"

 

Mike's Law: "Murphy was an optimist".

 

Mike's 2^nd Law:  Being an optimist isn't possible because everything in life is a conspiracy against us. The word "Optimist" is a clever semantic subterfuge.

 

Mike's 3^rd Law:  "Every successful and brilliant person will eventually reach the level of their own incompetence and irrelevancy". (Just look at my website for empirical proof of this law.)

 

Mike's 4^th Law:  "All the previous laws are bogus and don't work".

 

Mike's 5^th Law:  "I am bogus and don't work".

 

Mike's 6^th Law: "Quit while you are still ahead. I never need to quit because I'm never ahead. Therefore, expect many more new stories..."