Last night, 1:30 a.m.: A bigass, unnerving racket jerked me out of sound sleep -- the sound of something large and heavy falling to the floor somewhere off in the flat ,of things breaking. The sound of potentially serious damage, hefty enough that neighbors were likely sitting up in bed like I was, wondering what in hell had just happened.
Turned on bedside light, got blearily to my feet, wandered out of bedroom searching for source of racket. Turned on a light in the living area, found ground zero: a sizeable faux antiquey kind of wall mirror had come down, shattering. Nearby lamp knocked to floor, glass shards scattered about. Amazingly, despite the size of the mirror and it colliding with furniture with on the way down, there didn't seem to be any other damage. No scratched wood, no torn fabric, no gashes in floor parquet.
I slowly cleaned up, put lamp back on table (lamp and lightbulb responding cheerily to being turned on, as if they'd experienced no mishap at all), swept up glass. And finally examined the wall. Found a hook insufficient for the weight of the mirror, found the mirror's eye-screw hanging from that small, abused hook -- also too tiny, too light for the weight it was supposed to hold. Whoever did the job had done it shoddily –- it was a miracle it hadn't come down sooner, a miracle nothing more had been destroyed
The flat is furnished, the owner is elderly, someone undoubtedly did the work for her. Could be they left her in the dark about how the task was done or didn't know enough themselves to get that what went up would come down, given the way the job was carried out. Mr. Natural once advised, 'Get the right tool for the job.' -- if only he were around to enlighten sloppy workmen/workwomen.* So the rest of us could get a night of sleep free of big noise and flying glass.
*Or in lieu of that, dole out enlightenment in the form of some mystical, remedial ass-trouncing.
España, te amo
rws 8:02 AM [+]
Comments:
i'm not surprised, mad. you strike me as someone who could appreciate the value of some judicious enlightenment/bum-kicking. (doled out to someone else, of course. heh.)
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