Things that Go Crackle in the Night

Tuesday night, Grant just couldn’t settle down for bed which is not totally uncommon.  In fact, it is common.  He told me the other night that he wished school happened in the middle of the night. 

That would work much better for him.

Tuesday night, I ended up going up the stairs twice to tell him to stop playing with his Legos and get his light off and go to sleep. 

By then it was probably 11:00 p.m.  Gary and I and Grandma Barbara, who was spending the night here before she left on her 10-day Red Cross volunteer adventure helping flood victims in Southern Illinois, decided to call it a night. 

So in the night around 3:30 a.m., I heard an unusual sound that apparently was loud enough to wake me up.  I didn’t pay much attention to it actually because there seems to always be some noises around here in the night with the dog messing around on the deck or the fridge or water softener doing their thing.  But then when I heard it a second time, I thought I better get up and check it out, this mystery noise.

When I walked through the living room, Grandma on the couch asked “What is going on?”  So, it was loud enough that it had woke her up, also. 

The sound was coming from upstairs.  As I took up the stairs, my immediate thought was an angry “that kid is up again playing with his Legos!!”   But then I  pinpointed the sound was not from Grant’s bedroom, but from the boys’ bathroom.  That led me to conclude that Grant’s sleepwalking days were not over after all and he was in the bathroom still completely asleep, but flinging Legos around the room. 

That’s what it sounded like. 

Then as I entered the bathroom, I right away reassessed, letting Grant and his Legos off the hook when I blindly determined that our whole bathroom ceiling must be caving and falling to the floor. 

This all passed through my head in the span of just a few seconds and I know I haven’t felt such confusion since the night the little earthquake woke me up in the night a few years ago.

Then I turned on the bathroom light. 

I saw millions, maybe billions, of little chunks of glass all over the floor. 

The shower door was completely cracked into a trillion pieces and falling bit by bit.   It was still making a crackle sound as each individual piece of glass cracked into smaller pieces.  Unreal.  I stood there just stunned for a second.  Grandma had followed me up the stairs and we just looked at each other in confusion.  Why was this happening?  What do we do?

Using that super-responsive, quick brain I have and my supreme ability to get right at solving whatever problem is facing me, I ran downstairs and woke up Gary.

I will say I did have the presence of mind to get a sheet and lay it down so at least the rest of the glass could be somewhat contained and a little easier to clean up.

I also had sense enough to put on my flip flops. 

Gary went at it barefoot.  I was thinking “that sure ain’t too smart.”  

He told me to go get a couple of Phillips screwdrivers.  I was so impressed that he knew about some special screw in the shower door frame that we could untighten to help us with this shower door problem crumbling before our eyes.  I would never have known that!

I ran downstairs and quickly back up to produce the two Phillips screwdrivers I had.  I handed him one, directly flat onto his palm just like the nurses do for the doctors on TV, with total respect for this wonder man. Really, his remarkable intelligence and know-how amaze me sometimes.    

And then he started busting the remaining hanging glass with the screwdriver.  

???

Made me kinda question the need for a Phillips-specific screwdriver, but I didn’t actually question that out loud.

By the end of the whole crazy event, we ended up with three ice cream buckets of tiny shattered glass pieces and a whopping mess in and outside the shower. 

And this empty door frame. 

  

But an interesting night, for sure. 

None of the kids even came out of their beds to see what was happening and I’m telling you, the whole event was so noisy.   And no one really knows what caused it to happen.  Jack and Grant use that shower each night before bed and no one noticed anything.  We were just relieved the crack fest didn’t happen while they were in there.

***No feet (bare or flip-flopped) were harmed in the making of this story, just our good night’s sleep.***