I don't get it.

Months ago I started a new series right here on RoundSeventeen, entitled: "Things I Will Never Understand." 

Given my self-evident intellectual deficiencies and my 10th grader's understanding of work, women, the world at large, and the difference between foods with gluten and the foods without gluten, you'd think I'd be able to expand on this series twice a week. 

But today I come to you loaded for bear.

1. Murphy's Law. In general I understand the tenets of this axiom. And understand its universal application. If it didn't happen to everybody there's a good chance this fictional piece of legislation would never have entered our collective consciousness. What I don't understand is why Murphy has singled me out for repeated prosecution. 

Example: Years ago, my late uncle was no longer able to drive his newly-leased 2018 Nissan Kicks. This happened at the very same time my daughter totaled her car. So I took over the lease and handed the keys to my oldest. Unfortunately, the process of doing so is not as simple as one might expect. And I quickly fell into an abyss of bureaucratic hell, which included hours on the phone, several fruitless trips to the local DMV, and countless hours of phone calls with Sacramento officials. 

In short, it took 21 agonizing months of back and forth to finally get a valid registration and license plates tags. So for close to two years my daughter was driving an unregistered vehicle with no legal tags. Then the very day before I was going to hand the tags and the vaunted registration card over to her, she got pulled over by a cop and cited for the infraction. 

FML!

2. Parking Garage Fee Machines. I regularly take my wife to an oncology infusion center in Santa Monica. It's relatively easy to get to. The building is clean. The doctors and nurses are the best. And the experience is as pleasant as going to to take your wife to be pumped full of poisons can be. 

Leaving, however, is not so easy. 

To egress the said center one must scan the QR code on the back of the ticket, then feed the ticket into the given slot, then simultaneously feed a credit card into its given slot, then remove all the papers and then confibulate the flick flacks to the appointed settings. I don't know what the fuck they want me to do and neither do the other frustrated parkers who regularly form a line at the confounding machine trying to figure it all out. 

Fortunately, the building has a man with a very official looking blue polo shirt representing the parking company to help people figure it all out. Brilliant.

3. Music. I know this may sound odd, but to other non-musical people I suspect the bewilderment is all too common. When I attended public school in NYC we were all forced to purchase a wooden recorder, sit in a huge auditorium and play in unison. I can't imagine what they paid those music teachers back then, but to sit in that auditorium -- clearly the 7th Ring of Hell -- it was never enough.

Today, I play no musical instruments. And wonder how the people who do, do. 

Whether it's Jon Batiste banging the keys on the piano or Carlos Santana whirling his way up and down the neck of a guitar, or Fred Armisten of SNL fame, banging away on the set of drums, none of it makes any sense to me. How on earth do the hands, the fingers, the eyes, the ears and the brain, put it all together, in time, to make such beautiful sound? 

If I can clip my fingernails without drawing blood it's a miracle.

Years ago, I heard a well respected business woman say that she strives to be the "dumbest person in the room."

Mission accomplished.