Smashed a lamp this afternoon while doing laundry. Actually only the light bulb broke, but a couple months ago this same light bulb stuck to the lampshade and almost caught fire (smoke, melting plastic paper, the whole works), so the lamp was pretty much a wash anyway. And we threw it out.

And earlier this week I broke a glass by knocking it off the coffee table with my foot. So now I'm just waiting to see what the third thing I'll break will be. Window? Plate? Computer screen? I'm getting very good at collecting miniscule shards of glass off wooden floors.

Since list entries seem to be all the rage these days, here's my list of broken glass stories:

1.) Family vacation in Chicago. About 13 years ago. We were staying in this hotel (since torn down) that had to have been a mobster's hangout in the fifties. Lots of geometric wall decorations.

One day my dad and I went out on an architectural walking tour (one he had made himself by compiling a list of things he wanted to see) while everyone else (philistines) stayed in the hotel room. While we were gone, little sister L. decided she was going to set up a space for her treasures under a table lamp. But the lamp was dusty, so she started cleaning it with a damp washcloth to make it a more fitting display area. And the light bulb exploded upon contact with the wet rag.

To this day Dad doesn't know this happened. Apparently everyone jumped when the bulb popped, and then they quickly swept the glass up and hoped he'd not notice. They secretly acted the event out for me when we came back, though, and although I'm sure you had to be there to get the full effect, the sight of L. miming the moment when she was dutifully wiping at the bulb and then pretending to jump back when it blew up were pretty funny just on their own.

2.) We have a playroom built in over our garage, and we used to spend the majority of our summer days hanging out up there. A staircase with a fluorescent light bulb tube hanging above it leads up the room, and on the left above the staircase a second-floor sliding door hanging in the middle of the wall serves as a window. We also had an intercom to the house so our mother could call us in for lunch or whatnot.

One day she called us in, and we were shutting everything down, and I slid the sliding door shut so hard that the fluorescent light tube dropped straight down from its socket and bounced end over end down the rest of the staircase to shatter in the front doorwell. We stared at it in shock, and then called to the house for help. We had to sit up there for like ten minutes while Mom cleaned it all up, and for the rest of the summer we had to wear shoes when going to the playroom in case there was any powdered glass left over.

3.) There were also rows of the same kind of fluorescent lights lining two walls of the playroom, each bordered by a long piece of wood. One time we were hitting a tennis ball against the wall and, in a totally fluke angled shot, the ball suddenly dropped straight down and smashed out another light.

I'm just very tough on glass.