The Laws and the Agents of Murphy

A couple of years ago I was out on a meandering walk which produced the lazy kernel of an idea for a short film or story.  It all had to do with Murphy's Law, that infamous and contentious law of reality (depending on your point of view) that states `that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong'.

We all experience Murphy's Law at different points in our lives. More often than not it's effects can be felt at the most inopportune times and thats one of the laws constants; If it is going to go wrong, then it will be at the very worst time, when it is least wanted or appreciated  We all experience it but there seem to be some poor folk who experience it more than others. `What,' I speculated, `if there were forces that determined who got to experience this insidious law with greater frequency than others?

What if nothing was by accident and that that will go wrong has been predetermined to go wrong to a particular person or persons at a particular time and place and supernatural beings are employed to bring them about?  What if these beings were known as `The Agents of Murphy'?   

`What,' I speculated, `if there were forces that determined who got to experience this insidious law with greater frequency than others?

I got very excited about this idea for a few days and then forgot all about it until on a walk this morning when it popped back into brain for a cup of tea and scones at the kitchen table.  I'm currently reading Walter Isaacson's Biography Albert Einstein: His life and Universe and my head is swimming with varying degrees of comprehension of Einstein working on the general and special laws of Relativity, explaining how light works, How Gravity and Mass affect each other and so on.  It's very interesting stuff.

Well, What if there were literally Murphy's Laws? Laws of reality, cause and effect and so on but on a lateral level in life? To my mind it seemed the only folk who could quantify them would have to be Irish or at the very least, share a similar way of looking at the world.

I think there's something to this idea. I'm going to think on it some more.

I'll get back to you.