The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Twenty minutes ago I was lying peacefully in bed, sleepily mulling things over in my mind (and by things I mean "the plan"), when I was jolted from my semi-conscious state by a rather unusual sound. It sounded wooden, clunky, scary, falling and wrong. I jumped. I tried to figure out what the sound could have been. Unfortunately, in my foggy state, my usually astute logical powers of deduction did not come easily. I turned on the lamp and saw nothing new. It occurred to me I really need to clean my room since the mystery noise could have been any number of things and with all the shit strewn all over the place I'd just never know.

I started to think laterally. No mean feat at this time of the night, let me tell you! It sounded wooden and clunky, I thought to myself. What in this room is wooden and clunky? ... Nearly everything. But not everything can fall ... I looked up at a small shelf, bolted to the wall above my bed. It didn't appear to be sitting properly. I put my face up against the wall next to it and looked at it side-on. I could see behind it. Wait a minute, I thought, this isn't right. I slowly drew back and realise the entire shelf was being held to the wall by two screws instead of the usual four; the top two had come undone and the whole thing was tilted forward at an unnerving angle. Above the very spot previously occupied by my sleeping head. Fuck! My shelf is falling! I felt a little like Henny-Penny.

I got out of bed and went into Mum and Dad's room. "Quick, Dad, I need a philip's head!" I said quickly. "Huh?" Dad said. Evidently this shelf was intent on ruining more sleep than just mine. "I need a philip's head screwdriver," I repeated, "my shelf is hanging off the wall and I need to do something about it before it decapitates me or something." He furrowed his brow. I tried to explain further. "Ok you know the blue shelf above my bed?" He nodded. "Well, it's screwed into the wall with those metal plaster-screw-fixed thingos, right." He nodded, this time slower. "Ok so the screw has come out of the metal thing in the wall." The nodding continued to slow.

I decided that perhaps an illustration was in order to properly explain the situation. I made my left hand into a cylinder and explained "this is the metal thing in the wall". I then inserted my right index finger into the 'hole' in the left hand, moved it in and out a few times and said "and this is the screw. It moves in and out." I stopped suddenly as it occurred to me exactly what I was doing.

Dad simply said "So it's fucked?"
"Yes. Fucked."

The formerly-bolted-to-the-wall shelf is now sitting on the floor where it can't unwittingly decapitate anyone.