Murphy Goes To Princeton

Murphy’s Law was in full effect today. The forecast called for rain, so I brought my rain jacket with me. It drizzled briefly around midday when I ran out for coffee without my jacket. The rest of the time, I carried my rain jacket around on a hot, humid day for no reason. During the coffee run, I decided to get an iced tea, which I promptly spilled on my white shirt. (Around this time, something was going on at the office that was stressing me out, but I can’t get into details.)

Anyway, I left work early to catch a train to Princeton where I was meeting my friends for dinner. It was supposed to be an express train, but the local train that preceded it was cancelled due to mechanical difficulties, so my train had to make local stops. 

Luckily, the crew took pity on us - or they were just overwhelmed - so they didn’t collect our tickets. Effectively, I had a one-way ticket to Princeton that I could use for a future dinner.  Oh, but wait a moment! Don’t forget that Mr. Murphy was along for the ride. In order to get into the town of Princeton, you have to take a second train, a shuttle. The conductor on the shuttle did ask for a ticket. But instead of cancelling just the shuttle portion of the ride, he took the whole ticket.

“Wait!” I called out. The conductor ignored me and walked away.

“Sir!” He kept walking, and by now, he had slipped my ticket into a whole stack of tickets in his hand. There was no way to determine which one was mine, so I decided not to argue about it. I was already running late.

As a result of the train schedule debacle, I arrived late to the dinner. Very late. My friends were finishing their entrées when I finally arrived at the restaurant. I ordered, and we sat around chatted for another hour and a half, so it was still a worthwhile evening, but it was frustrating to get there that late.

We finished dinner around 9 o’clock. I had no possibility of catching the 9:03 train, so I had to wait for the 10:05. Since I had time, I decided to indulge in ice cream at the famous ice cream shop on the main street. This involved waiting on line for twenty-five minutes, but it didn’t matter, because I had most of an hour to kill.

I hung my rain jacket from the shoulder strap of my briefcase and enjoyed a lovely summer evening’s walk through campus, enjoying my ice cream along the way. I arrived at the train station with about fifteen minutes to spare, but unfortunately, I noticed that something was missing. My rain jacket had fallen somewhere along the way.

I dashed back though the campus frantically until ten o’clock, but I never found my jacket. With I dashed toward the train and made it with seconds to spare.