Excerpt: The Wolf on the Bathroom Wall / Murphy & Me

Murphy & me, an extract:
Chapter One: Where our heroine makes a long lasting deal with Murphy and learns to regret it in the end (or rather not to put too much faith in its solidity).

Murphy and I, we have a deal. If you ask me it is, or was, a damn good one too. In essence, it goes down like this: I do not bitch, moan, whine or be disagreeable about trains being late, annuled or otherwise detained if (and mostly when) it happens. My main reason to accept that deal was because it never helps me to whine about things like that, it will not make the trains arrive faster, only annoy me further, and I do not need this, I have better things to focus my annoyance on (Murphy stalking me for example). In return, Murphy does not mess with my trains. Because, when he does, I never can get anywhere on time and this, I really, really, really do not like.
So, we made that deal and it held fast, until now that is.

I am coming to realise, though, that it only worked because ever since I develloped an allergy to tardiness after countless hours of nagging from teachers and teasing from my classmates alike because of the incapability of my father to bring my sisters and me on time at school, I have always planned my deplacements with at least an half hour safety net of travel time. You never know what can happen to your train. Murphy has a wide arsenal of situations, ranging from misfortune to full on disaster, to chose from when deciding your train will not get you on time to your destination, or if it will even get you anywhere near it before your appointement is dead and buried under several feet of paperwork.

Let me share an example with you, that just might even have happened to me. An idiot might have decided to attempt suicide at the early hour of 5h37, precisely two minutes and twenty three seconds before your train is scheduled to depart your station, some eleven stops before the inconsiderate character threw himself on the rails and thus immediatly sending the whole line into general shutdown.
And when this happens, there are only two outcome possible: either you are quite a lucky person (well, in the limit of Murphy's goodwill anyway), the suicidal jerk failed and the interruption will be tolerable and have a tendency to be short. Your wagon might become a little crowded after a few stops, but nothing life threatening, having no seat will not seem such a hardship, after all, your train is moving and you will only be half an hour late at worst.

Or, and this generally is what happens to me, the rude individual will have managed his feat, in which case you are left for several hours waiting for the police forces and firemen to pick up the pieces left of him (not that you will be told this, oh no, you will kindly be informed that an accident involving a passenger has occurred, stewing in your neighbours's rage at the delay, and complete ignorance of the duration for which you will have to wait for the service to pick up all the while wondering if you will survive what just has become the perilous journey to your station. And trust me, by the time it does start again, it will have morphed in a life threatening trip. You will curse that dude and your rotten luck (I always blame Murph' myself, but feel fre to blame whoever is responsible for the kidnapping of your personnal luck fairy) that did not allow you to score a seat, because the next stations are going to be packed full of people so anxious to cram themselves in the next train that they will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing to get in, not even walking on you, crushing you against the metal bar sitting in the middle of the wagon or strike you with their luggage / umbrella / whatever large object they carry and do not know how to handle in crowded locales. In comparaison a sardine preserve would be considered the location to be in, instead of the train wagon. And when your turn to get out of the wagon will come, you will find yourself faced with two rather large obstacles: The other personnes in the wagon who are staying, and the ones who want to get in. Chance are, if you want to make out of there in a timely fashion you will have to renege a certain number of your moral tenets, like not being disagreeable or not behave like a bully. I assure you, in those times, it is either that or get off two stations after your own. There is a third option, but you probably will not witness it in action, that consists to isolate a likely candidate for the bully approach and follow him (or her) very closely. Do NOT show common courtesy, or hesitation when following that rude individual, he is your way out, if you get separated you will have to fend for yourself and it is not a good option as demonstrated before. Once out, repeat with the next train (I advise against grabbing the very first train at your correspondance, unless there is a strike, taking the second one usually allows for some breathing space you would have been unlikely to get had you taken the first one), and hope for the best.

And this, my friend is only one example, there are many more possibilities and degrees of hardship involved with delayed trains in Paris. But back to the subject at hand, my deal with Murphy. As I was saying before going on a tangent, I have finally realised that this deal was for the most part, only valid when I observed my cardinal rule of adding at least half an hour of extra time on my planned travel estimation (depending, of course of the importance of the appointement and its distance from my starting point, the extra time varies a bit). Lately, I have been forced to acknowledge that Murphy had reneged our deal uniteraly, as even if I take the minimal extra travel time, I will arrive late. My trains will get held up several time to let a train coming from the other branch pass in front of us...
Or, it might also be a direct consequence of my recent tendency to push the snooze button on my alarm clock, but since Murphy is involved, there is no way I am admitting there are good chances that I am the one not holding up on her part of the deal.