Irony of all Ironies!

Okay, so I exaggerate a bit, but what I describe below is at least worthy of mention on one of those "Murphy's Law" posters.

My family does not have the neatness gene. We've all heard the old line about "being a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest." Well, that is about the scope of the disadvantage I find myself in when it comes to keeping our family van clean.

It seems that no matter how often I grab trash out of the car after using it, there is still mounds of trash there the next time I get in. The problem is simple math: one person takes trash out of the car and five people put it in--there is no way I can win against those numbers.

So I had this plastic Target soft drink cup in my car (the clean one). The day I bought this drink at Target the drink machines stopped working after I had poured but three-slurps worth of my slurpee-like drink. Right then and there I vowed to right this injustice by saving the cup and getting what was rightfully mine on my next trip.

That was today. When I reached for the backseat cupholder where I had placed the cup, I came up empty-handed. Since this is no trifling matter to me, I called my wife on my cell to ask her if she had seen my cup. Well, you guessed it. My wife--who only takes old cups out of her cupholders when there are none available to use for new drinks--helpfully removed the trash from my car, leaving me slurpee-less.

Make that Murphy's Law number whatever: If you are saving something that is valuable only to you, someone will turn neat freak at precisely the wrong time.