The Imp of the Perverse

I may be home tomorrow night.

My wife would like that. She loves Halloween, and she won't be going anywhere if I'm not there. Until yesterday I didn't think I'd make it, so I didn't mention the possibility to her.

Good thing.

I got up this morning and threaded my way through an unfamiliar city to my delivery site. Where I was told I didn't have an appointment.

An hour or so later they found it. Two hours after that they got me in a dock and started unloading. Took them maybe thirty minutes.

Then I drove for most of an hour on wet, windy two-lanes to the next shipper. They got me loaded in an hour. I smiled as I reported to my company.

They sent a message back. The weight on the bill of lading didn't match what they had in their computer records. And I wouldn't be allowed to scale the load until the discrepancy was resolved.

That only took another 45 minutes.

So I went down the road another hundred miles and stopped for fuel. The company pays for the fuel, of course. Just give the pump a taste of the company fuel card and punch in a few numbers (truck number, mileage, that sort of thing). Simple.

The pump said see the cashier.

The cashier said I was driving the wrong truck.

That one only took ten minutes to straighten out. But it was getting dark.

I like to read science fiction. Some of it is written by religious types. Some of them have a sense of humor. One of the cuter jokes I've run across in such people's works involves solemn discussions of a demon they call the “Imp of the Perverse.” The father of conspiracy theories. The enforcer of Murphy's Law (or so he claims). The one who whispers in your ear, “This can't all be coincidence, now can it?”

His goal is to convince you that some secret organization—or maybe the universe itself—is out to get you. That you're so important that Reality itself is being twisted around just to make you miserable.

On days like this, the Imp has a fairly easy time of it.

But I did get unloaded. And loaded. And fueled. And I drove through the rain and the gusting winds without killing myself or anyone else.

And I covered enough miles that I can legally drive the rest of the way tomorrow. As late as four o'clock I wasn't sure I'd manage that.

So I called my wife, to give her the good news.

She isn't picking up. Asleep, I guess.

Sigh.