Right or wrong, Loki's law is real.

Have you ever noticed that if you drop the cap off a water bottle, it will inevitably roll under the refrigerator? Or if you absentmindedly set your car keys down after coming inside, the next time you look for them, they have moved? How about filling the gas tank on your mower, leaf blower, or string trimmer? Yup, no matter how careful you are, it will overflow a bit.

Some folks will automatically and quite smuggishly announce this is Murphy's law at work. I'm not convinced it is. It is a mystery, kind of like the word smuggishly. It's there because it has to be to fulfill a purpose. What that purpose is, is sometimes unclear.

How many times in a lifetime have we stubbed our toe on an invisible projection, or shut a finger in a door? While barefoot I couldn't count the times, I've stepped on a hard dog food pellet and it had the same effect as stepping on a pointy rock. What mysterious Lokian force was at work there to guide me to place the exact center of my heel on that agonizing and pain-inflicting protein-rich pellet?

There is some sort of... can I say deviltry at work in our daily doings. Can I say daily doings without grinning? One fellow remarked after finding a 1/2 drive shiny socket that he lost while working on his car, "I found it in the last place I looked!" It was on top of the air filter the whole time and he looked for 10 minutes. Now tell me there isn't some heinous trickster at work there because I also find stuff in the last place I look!

I was eating a delectable morsel the other day and bit my lip and I mean I chomped down on it to the point I was bleeding. Why? Why me? Why then? I mean, I have been chewing since the day I discovered food and here all of a sudden... CHOMP! It's that hidden prankster of the universe that deliberately alters our path so we can experience new and sometimes painful things. That is the only logical conclusion and I invoked Ockham's Razor for that one. You know it, right? If there is more than one explanation for something, the simple one is usually the correct answer.

Sometimes this law works in our favor, like the time we had a flat tire in the middle of nowhere and I got out and there was folding money on the ground. Or the other day when in a crowded restaurant, I reached for something and almost knocked over a glass of a sugary beverage. Like a striking cobra, I righted the vessel and then looked around expecting a 4 foot tall trophy. The Force was strong in me that day, but alas - no trophy was forth coming.

Two days later while walking my dogs around the Blue Heron Parkway trail, I spied my first double rainbow and again, this unwritten law put me in the exact right place to experience this visual rarity. Sure, I prefer the benefits of this mischievous law, but I am more than often, it's victim. I've noticed that if I open up a wound on any part of my head, hand, foot, elbow, or knee, somehow this law will direct me to bump into something to compound the pain and it will happened repeatedly until it finally heals. Then I cease to bump into anything. The Loki law ran its course, closing the loop and I am safe once again.

On a serious note, do I really believe there is an invisible imp sitting on my shoulder waiting to cause me discomfort or possibly let me peek into the sublime? No.  I do not, but then again it is an easy way out and lifts the embarrassment of admitting that self-infliction is the logical solution. "My fault?  Seriously?  No way!" I can't find my keys because I put them down anywhere that's handy and the reason my injured finger doesn't hurt after it heals is because it's no longer injured. The reason a bottle cap will roll under the refrigerator is because its round and rolls until it stops.

Dang that Ockham's Razor!  It's more fun to think an imp named Loki is causing it, but the truth is life and gravity are two things we cannot completely control and sometimes it gives us stubbed toes and other times, double rainbows.

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