Old man Murphy
Old man Murphy has a lot to answer for with his law about how if something can go wrong, it will and at the worst possible moment.
Most of life’s petty dramas can be traced back to some instance of Murphy’s Law in action. The flat tire on the way to a doctor’s appointment. The car that decides it doesn’t like the cold and leaves you stranded with scary indicator lights on the coldest day of the year. Or a dryer that decides it likes to swallow cellphones.
Sunday morning started with all the promise of being a great day. I took pictures and had breakfast at the Medford FFA pancake breakfast. It is always great to combine supporting a worthwhile cause with getting some yummy regular and potato pancakes with locally produced real maple syrup.
After breakfast my family and I had the chance to tag along with the high school drama department trip to see the play Hadestown at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis. We left in the morning and got back to Medford at 7 p.m. I am a fan of not having to drive and enjoyed a short nap on the way home.
So far it had been a great day. Kim got a message from her mother asking us to stop when we got back into town with a list of things that she needed help with. With four of us, the list should have taken about 15 minutes and we could be home in time to veg out and maybe watch a TV show as a family – something that we don’t get to do very often.
Old man Murphy had other plans. My task was to find out why the dryer vent screen didn’t want to go back into its slot. The most obvious solution is that something had gotten on the track and it would just be a matter of getting it out. I remained optimistic as I saw that indeed it was a small shiny silver wood screw holding up the works. It is not my place to question how a wood screw ended up in the dryer vent opening. Such things are above my pay grade. I simply needed to get a screwdriver or other flat tool and pop it back out.
This is where Murphy got involved. I was using my cellphone as a flashlight to check out the dryer vent and had it propped up next to the opening. Either I bumped the phone or the dryer was just really hungry, but next thing I know my cellphone was being gulped down the gullet of the electric dryer vent.
While you might be able to walk away and come back another day with a magnet to dislodge an out of place screw, the cellphone was a priority for me to have for work the next day.
With the help of my son, Alex, we pulled out, unplugged and removed the back panel of the dryer. This task was made harder than necessary because my socket drivers were at home in my tool bucket. My family often makes fun of me for carrying around a workshop’s equivalent of random tools and equipment in my vehicle. Of course, when I don’t have anything with me is when I would most need them. We ended up taking two trips from my mother in law’s house to my own to get the tools needed. The second one was for the battery from the screw gun that had been left on the charger.
It is, of course, during the second trip back that I had to walk in from the street because the neighbor’s truck was parked running in the middle of their shared driveway.
We got the dryer back panel off and undid the few screws holding the screen vent channel in place. Once we had the right tools things went along pretty smoothly and soon not only my, now pretty dusty, cellphone was free, but I was also able to clean out the accumulated dryer lint that had fallen inside it along with the silly little wood screw.
Alex and I put things back together and searched for and eventually found where I had put the 16-inch long drier screen — in my defense inside the washing machine was a very safe place for it to be to keep it out of the way. Once we put everything back together, we checked to make sure everything worked the way it should.
It was after 9 p.m. when we finally got home, as Murphy and his law added two hours to what should have been a quick pit stop.
Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.
