Recipe for disaster*

Take a very tall, plastic glass out of the cupboard and fill it up with nice cold water. Now bring it upstairs, and put it on your nightstand. You are going to drink it while reading in bed, since you decided to go to bed early (9:30).

Remember there is an eclipse tonight, so go downstairs and outside to check it out. The eclipse is really cool, and you'll want to share it with those you love. So, go back upstairs, call your mom on your phone, get her to look at the eclipse, then, just for good measure, talk to her for a while.

When you're done (take your time!), go back outside to check on the progress of the eclipse.** Afterward, go back to your bedroom, settle down on your bed, and pull your laptop out. Surf around for a while. In fact, be so intent on surfing around that before you know it, it is 11:03, and you've squandered your chance at an early bedtime.

Put the laptop away, preferably just down on the floor next to the bed. Then turn the light off, and lie on the bed for a while.

Now this next part is important, so pay attention!

It's not a good idea to sleep in your jeans and sweatshirt; you should really put on your pyjamas. They are are, after all, lying right next to you on the bed. No excuse.

BUT.

Don't put the light back on, and whatever else you do, for heaven's sake, DON'T stand up to properly get changed. Just pull your jeans off whilst lying on the bed in the pitch black. Got it? Good. Now, don't listen to your mother and fold the jeans up neatly; just toss them to the floor at the side of the bed. Furthermore, make sure you toss them there in the laziest fashion possible (ie., a nice wide arc, jean legs slicing elegantly through the air, etc.).

Almost 100% guaranteed, THIS is the moment where you will suddenly here a "plonk - SPLOOSH" sound.

Did you hear that? What could it be?

Certainly not the giant glass of water that remained by the side of the bed, at the edge of the nightstand, for a few hours, untouched, undrank, and unspilled. Certainly not. There's just no way.


Notes:
- You might want to keep a towel handy. Or at least, a good pair of screeching lungs so that, when the water suddenly decides to flow faster and harder than Niagara Falls, your partner-in-crime comes bounding up the stairs and into the room with a towel in hand faster than you can say "There'swaterinthatglass!"

- I don't want to espouse unbridled, out-of-control disaster. So make sure you engineer this scenario so that somehow, miraculously, the deluge, though expanding across at least four square feet of floor space (who knew one little glass could hold so much liquid?), reaches to within only a few millimetres of where your laptop is sitting. Otherwise, this story would be even more poignant: How to destroy your laptop only 3 days before you plan on replacing it with a newer model***. On that note, just in case things go awry, I recommend you try this experiment with an old laptop, and not the new model that you may have just picked up.

- Make sure it is a nice tall glass. And don't over-do the disaster - use plastic, not glass. Trust me, with water all over your wooden nightstand, hardwood floor, jeans, and a few books, not to mention about 8 skeins of various yarns that you'd pulled out the night before in an attempt to figure out a complicated knitting stitch - there's enough water and disaster as it is without glass shards being thrown in to the mix.



* Don't try this at home.

** Technically, it's not necessary to have an eclipse in this Recipe, but it adds a romantic or literary aspect to the whole thing, don't you think?

***I do plan on replacing my laptop this weekend, with any luck. I also plan on never drinking water or other liquids again. You never know what might happen.