My family is home all day. All of us. My wife teaches our kids, so they don’t go to public school. I work from home. She works from home. This is a busy house.
The main hall is lined with paintings and drawings by my wife. This hallway connects the front door, the back door, and the bathroom. All day long we have kids roughhousing, and people slamming the heavy doors as they enter and leave the house. (Not to mention the persistent level of traffic you get around a bathroom in a house of five people. ) Despite this constant vibration, the art manages to stay on the walls.
Last year, my wife took the kids on a trip to visit a friend in another state. They were gone for a few days. The day after they left, one of the paintings randomly fell off the wall. No reason. No provocation. I was sitting in my office like I always do, when I heard a crash from the hall and found the floor glittering with broken glass. I wasn’t even listening to loud music. “Hm. That was random,” I thought.
Yesterday, my wife left with the kids to visit that same friend. It’s now the next morning, and another painting just fell off the wall. (No broken glass this time, thank goodness.)
I am annoyed at how utterly mystifying, inexplicable, and random this is, while at the same time being completely mundane. It’s just a stupid little mystery that I’ll probably never figure out.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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