Booby-Traps, Mayhem and Gribbles

An Exposé of Dark Forces

Some say it's best to only write about things you fully understand. I can't say I fully understand, but it just so happens I am an expert on my topic today, by virtue of a lifetime of experience. As evidence to that fact I will offer exhibit one, where I typed the word “today' in the second line. Before I fixed that word, it read “tofsy” because the “s” key is right beside the “a”, and the “f” key is right beside the “d”. Of course if I had been using the Dvorak keyboard, which is laid out quite differently, I would have mis-typed it using different letters. If I had been more careful, knowing it was going to happen, I'd have mis-typed the word that came right after it. That's because booby-traps and mayhem are visited on us at the same time from different directions. Experimentation has shown that if you think you can see it coming, you can block it from this way and it will come at you from the opposite side; if you block it from both sides it will come down from on top. If you block it from every exposed side it will either come right up through the floor, or else you will succeed in blocking it, but now you are in a corner because you can't move. In that event you won't get anything done for all of the efforts you made to block the occurrence, and that's what was supposed to happen to you in the first place. You lose.

Over the centuries, superstitious people have come up with all sorts of ideas to explain these seemingly ridiculous phenomena. It has been attributed to pixies, elves, gnomes, gremlins, demons, and the devil himself. Everybody has suspected at one time or another that something was being done to them, and I have to tell you there is just no doubt about it whatsoever. While I can't say for certain that any of it is attributable to any of the things I've listed, there is most certainly some sort of negative, unwholesome force at work.

Just to clarify the kinds of occurrences to which I'm making reference, this happened to me just the other morning. I was running a little late, and I still needed to change into clothes that were more suitable for the manual tasks that were before me. I had been grocery shopping the night before and I had dutifully taken each item to its place. In the bathroom where I chose to change, the brand-new six-pack of toilet paper rolls stood on the vanity. I hadn't put it away yet, since I needed to rearrange things a bit in the cabinet to make the package fit. So I sorted things out of my pockets and laid my wallet on the edge of the vanity, along with a comb, a folding pocket knife that I've carried all my life, a cell phone, two sets of keys and a sizable handful of change. The change of course had settled to the bottom of my pocket, so that it came out last. I stood there with this big handful of change and there was no place left for it on the narrow vanity. Where there was space, was on top of the package of toilet paper. So I cupped my hands and carefully centered it on one of the rolls in the package, and it sat there nicely. I proceeded to change my trousers.

Finishing up, I stepped into my shoes and bent down to tie them. I had no sooner put one knee on the floor when the entire pile of change came sailing. A few quarters bounced off of my head, pennies glanced off of the tub and rolled across the floor, dimes dropped in an irregular fashion into the deep pile of the bathroom rug. For a moment I didn't move. I watched with a singular interest as two nickels rolled away from me, side by side and on edge, initially at the same rate. Somehow they came to rest on opposite sides of the toilet. But after all the other coins seemed to have stopped moving, a third nickel appeared at a right angle to the toilet and laid itself down beneath the tank.

I really can't shake the feeling that I never will find all of the coins. Or that the cat will find and eat a dime I didn't recover, and will thereby cost me a huge veterinary bill for the surgery to remove it. I slowly stood up to see how all of that had been possible.

There are little shelves on either side of the medicine cabinet, and one of them was the home for an aerosol can of air freshener. I don't think I've picked up that can of air freshener in a year, and there is no reason whatsoever to believe that it could have vibrated to the edge of the shelf. But somehow, it came off the little shelf at the very moment I got down to tie my shoes, and glanced off of the side of the toilet paper package, tipping the package so that it dumped my change and unloaded the whole vanity. That's right, there wasn't a single item left on the vanity except for the package of toilet paper and the air freshener can, although the can was in the sink. Everything that had been in my pockets was now on the floor. It took me about ten minutes to collect everything I could find and get it all back in my pockets. Then I had to pull back into the driveway, unlock the house and go back upstairs for my cell phone, because in picking up the change, I had just plain overlooked it.

I gave that minor example because it proves without doubt that these things can happen without any other people around at all. Add a lot of people, and it can get a whole lot worse. One could easily argue that it's all because of people, and after all, deny it as I might, I am one of us. Efforts to stand apart and to assert that I'm different from everybody else have failed each time I've tried it. But I live alone, there was nobody in the house but me, and therefore there was nobody else to move the air freshener can. Even the cat can't reach it. I rest my case.

The real problem, of course, comes in when you add automobiles to the equation. For a long time I put a lot of miles on my car each day, and I've seen some crazy things. A double trailer fragmented all over the highway, and packages everywhere. No other vehicles were involved. A car carrier that had been fully loaded with new cars that lost its brakes, and its driver had to resort to the runaway truck ramp. Although the truck didn't tip over, there were new cars upside-down all around the stopped truck. I've seen no fewer than five individual rollovers of automobiles and SUVs, and more than five tipped or rolled tractor-trailers.

One of the rollovers was a large white SUV. The road was dry and the SUV was on its roof in the middle of a two-lane highway. I watched in amazement as one man pushed it straight, so that traffic could move past it. He just pushed on a corner and it turned on its roof, because the roof wasn't caved in, and the sides didn't appear to be dented, either. I still don't see how that one could have occurred, but I do wish I'd seen it happen. It probably wouldn't be any more believable.

I've had my car backed-into twice in parking lots, and lost one car altogether because the other driver turned in front of me. His insurance paid, but the experience taught me something about at least, that insurance company. They have it all worked out so that the amount they'll cheat you out of is just a little less than it will cost you to get a lawyer to recover the difference. That company airs, arguably, some of the most convincing auto insurance ads on television.

So yes, there are occurrences that are self-inflicted within the family of man. But that doesn't explain Chrissi.

Of course Chrissi is a stand-in name, an effort to keep me out of trouble with the actual person. But let me clue you, the urban legend that one should generally avoid women whose first name ends with the letter “i”, is apparently true. I can't really permit myself to worry about it if that bothers some people, you need this information.

Chrissi is a willowy, pretty brunette who might well have been hired for her looks. However she'd been given her own office, I'll leave you to speculate why. I don't think it's because she had a perpetual case of the sniffles. My observation was that Chrissi seemed to pull energy from her surroundings, and then she put it other places. By that I mean that truly strange things happened whenever she entered a room. Our workplace was on the ground floor of our building, her office was two floors above us. Generally there didn't seem to be any evidence that she could affect things through two concrete floors, but I'd have been pretty worried if there had been only one floor between us.

On the thankfully rare occasions that Chrissi came to our office for something, people got the hell out of the way. I've seen heavy things fall right over on the projects table, as she simply walked past it. I think if it had been safe to be around her long enough to check it out, it would have been found that she's capable of telekinesis. We've all seen people doing crazy stuff in the movies, like carrying a ladder on their shoulder and turning to talk to someone, and clearing a shelf with the other end of the ladder. Chrissi could do that without the ladder. Yes, it's spooky, but that's why we stayed out of the way. I have no idea how she got to work, but I do know she didn't have a drivers license, and we all still hope she never gets one. Since you have to pass a driver's test, it's pretty unlikely, anyway. If she does, I hope she insures with the company that cheated me out of eight hundred bucks. They'll be needing it.

Certain mysterious things do happen that I can't honestly determine are of human origin or the unexplained. Among those are my scheduled days off. I'm one of those unusual people who hasn't taken a week of vacation in years. I accumulate vacation time at the rate of two days a month, and during each month I usually take all of it as an hour here and there, or half-days or sometimes, even a full day off.

As a bit of background, let me just say that I'm not that all-fired important. Nevertheless, if I plan to take even as much as a half-day of vacation time, or even plan to see a dentist or doctor and take sick time, sure as hell somebody will come rushing in just as I'm leaving, with a great emergency. It might seem funny on the surface of it, but reliably and without exception, this happens. The proof of it is, it's always an emergency that requires my specific attention. My co-workers think its a joke, and have learned to get ready for increased activity at the counter the day before I'm supposed to leave. I am encouraged to schedule a day off whenever things start to get slow, just so business will pick up. I may be personally responsible for the fact that we've stayed busy despite the slow economy. I've missed my sons' football games, had to suffer an extra week with a toothache, and generally can only slip out if I don't tell anybody I'm thinking about doing it. In fact, that doesn't always work. I have to surprise myself, just to get away with it. I am not making this up, and it doesn't seem to be improving.

Then, there's the undeniable “wrench anomaly”. I would choose to call it that because it usually involves a wrench, but actually it's any kind of hand tool. For the greater part of my life I've done my own automotive repairs. Earlier in my adult life and while raising a young family, it was necessary. I couldn't afford to have a professional garage replace my clutch, rebuild a transmission, change a water pump, or repair my brakes. I was smart enough and willing, so I learned how to do all of those things, and more. But imagine being under an old vehicle and there's a bolt overhead, ugly and rusty and half-visible, and you have to select the right wrench of the right size to reach it, so you can pull the starter. You judge that it's perhaps a 9/16” wrench, or its closest metric equivalent, a 14 millimeter. So you climb out from under the car and go to the tool chest. If you can find the right kind of socket or box-end wrench in that size right off, then you automatically know it's not either of those sizes. Because the one you need, will be missing.

Now I know without asking that this inevitability will strike a chord with a lot of people. In fact, everyone I know who uses hand tools has this problem. Say what you want about organization. I've worked for hours to collect every tool that I own and to bring them all together, and then to separate them by type, then size, and arrange them all into plain sight on two big bench tops. Over the years I've accumulated a lot of tools. I own three bench vises, I have two propane torches, extra blades for each of my saws, several sets of wrenches, drills and bits, and several full sets of allen and torx wrenches. It makes no difference. I own at least four10-millimeter sockets, but if I need one, there won't be one anywhere to be found. If I need a 5/32” allen wrench, it's the only size that isn't present in any of my three sets. If I need a bench vise, why, I've broken one, another is three hundred feet away in my basement, and the one that's available has only just now begun to move hard, so that you need a big wrench on the handle to open and close it. There's no reason for it that's apparent, nevertheless it works harder as you force it to move. And if you don't get the bleeder loose in this wheel cylinder using the vise, you'll have to get to the parts store somehow to get a new cylinder. But the parts store is closed because it's getting late now, and you need to be able to drive to work in the morning.

But the bleeder won't come loose, even though this time, you weren't out of propane and one of the torches is working. Nope. Heat wouldn't do it either, so you rebuild the cylinder and you manage to get the air out of the brake line by cracking the nut open slightly where the hydraulic line connects to the cylinder. It means that you will have to go buy a cylinder later, jack up and support the car again, pull the wheel and the drum, disassemble the brakes and replace the cylinder, then reassemble again and bleed it properly. Mustn't forget to pick up yet another wrench in the size you need, and to guard it with your life, at least until the job is done. To hell with the vise. I know that means I'll need it soon, but I need to take it apart and see why it's binding, and I'm no longer up for it. If I fix it, for sure I won't need it.

At this stage of evolution and civilization, if we haven't figured out yet what's causing these anomalies, then I suspect we never will. It's been recognized by a tongue-in-check collection of Murphy's Laws, and has been characterized as “negative energy” by plenty of online whackos bent on selling ads by misleading gullible people. I understand that psychology has a place in a world of humanity, but it's too scary to think that the people who go online and write this stuff up might actually believe we can manipulate dark forces and light ones.

In fact, I would hypothesize that this thing can't be fought, only observed and laughed-at. Until it kills you, of course. I would suggest we give it a name, at least for reference. I don't think its appropriate to call it “negative energy”, it's far more insidious than that. I tend to think it's more like a shoulder-mounted gremlin. Let's call it a gribble. It just seems to fit. A nasty little creature that fell from the Creator's favor, but never quite made it to hell. Although it should have.

Despite the gribbles, of which there must be millions at least, consider all the successes that mankind actually has had. Sure, we've built self-destructing bridges and had big train wrecks, and who knows how many plane crashes. But we've managed to execute a landing on the moon, and everybody came back alive. I've theorized that gribbles can't survive in outer space. We've built many more nuclear reactors that continue to provide power, than the few that fried and threatened the annihilation of all living creatures for hundreds of miles around them. Efforts to bring the world together with the World Wide Web have had a significant measure of success. Never mind the unobstructed pathways for porn to flow to every phone or computer, the danger of cyber-attacks crippling our power grid, water supplies and economy, or the direct access to the marketplace for imported goods, to help displace even more of our jobs. All in all, the world has got to be a better place for people, for all of those successes. But what if?

Consider, it only takes one guy with one of these little bastards on his shoulder, waiting for the opportunity to screw with his head to end life on the planet as we know it. Some poor guy with his finger too near the red button that can launch the dreaded two-way nuclear holocaust, and he pushes the wrong thing. Hey, they don't care. There had to have been two or three of them talking to each one of Brady's receivers in last few minutes of, a certain Super Bowl. “Your're gonna drop it! Uh ohh! Look ouuut! Presssurrre!” The fact that Tom himself appeared to be immune, brings up the last thing I'd like to mention, namely, the exceptions.

There are quite a few people in this world who seem to make out in just about any circumstances that come their way. The most jealous among us sport bumper stickers that say, “Eat the Rich”. But in fact it's nothing but jealousy. Any of them would trade places with the object of their hatred in a 'New York minute'.

Usually these people are reasonably attractive, well-to-do or wealthy folks that admittedly had some sort of advantage going into the game. That doesn't begin to explain why they are able to maintain it. The bulk of us build up some credit card debt on top of a mortgage at least once in our lives, and very many of us just barely manage to subsist on whatever we bring home, even if we work multiple jobs. Meanwhile, these folks cruise along on the highway of life, establishing multiple cash streams to secure their assets, diversifying their stock portfolios, and driving fine automobiles to and from their big homes. If the economy goes south, they regroup, adjust and find new ways to take advantage of the situation. Then, with everything else going well, they win the lottery.

I have often wondered if the gribbles get shut down altogether where these people live, or if they just stand back out of respect. Or just maybe it's only a difference of scale, and that guy can't find the wrench he needs, either.

I'm afraid I'll never know.

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