Val's Dark Basement Lair, the Lawless Frontier

It's been a little while, but things are getting back to normal at Val's house. Uh huh. The laws of physics are once again being broken. This time in her personal sanctuary, her dark basement lair. It wasn't fully dark, either!

Friday evening, I was happily pecking away at New Delly's keyboard, not a care in the world, Hick upstairs foregoing the auction. The time was 6:19. I know, because I looked. I do that when something unexplainable happens.

THUMP!

What in the NOT-HEAVEN? I shouldn't hear noises behind me. No siree, Bob!  I have a desk built by Hick. It's a countertop that runs along two walls. I sit at the V, in the corner, where I can rest an arm on the countertop on each side. No wrist ailments for me! My printer is down the countertop on my right, a short roll away by rolly chair, on a raised section of countertop. Nothing back there should thump.

Slowly I turned. Inch by inch. I looked over my right shoulder. Nothing back there. Just the usual junk that I've let pile up. Pile up from Hick and The Pony carrying it in there after I cleaned out my classroom, and dumping it willy-nilly. Still. Nothing should thump.

I swiveled in my rolly chair. Didn't roll. Swiveled. To see if anything looked out of place. AHA! My box of Puffs Plus Lotion lay upside down, against a wheel of my rolly chair! The box of Puffs Plus Lotion that usually sits just so:

The first thing I did was set the Puffs box on the edge of the folder. To see if maybe it just slid off.  I'd opened a new box a couple days ago. Maybe I'd set it too close to the edge. That's a slick folder. Maybe it gradually slid more and more, until it fell. I kind of doubted that, because I'm a(n ex) science teacher. I know that the center of gravity of an object must not be outside its base of support, or it will fall. I would never place that box hanging out on the edge. In fact, in trying to do just that, I found that the box would not sit level. It rocked back and forth on that bulging part of the folder. I would definitely have felt or seen that rocking, and moved it back as I set it down.

Besides, even if that box of Puffs Plus Lotion fell over the edge, it would have fallen straight out. Not shot sideways to THUMP at the bottom of my rolly chair! I measured. It is 31 inches from my sitting position to the corner of that box. That's two-and-a-half arm lengths for me. That box had to shoot sideways to land where it did.

Huh. That was a bit disconcerting. But Hick was upstairs, it was still technically daytime, not the witching hour. I had my lights on, because I'd just finished eating some fried chicken from Walmart (not nearly as good as that from The Gas Station Chicken Store). Of course, I only have ONE of the four rectangular florescent lights in my ceiling that actually lights up. But my office was fairly well-lit. At least where I was sitting, and where the Puffs box was sitting.

Still. I knew Hick would just call me "crazy as Neighbor Bev." So I sent a text to The Pony. He's seen these weird things here, too.

"The box of Puffs with Lotion just shot off the counter by my printer! Not even near the edge! It landed against a wheel of my rolly chair. So it flew sideways! Hope you're not casting spells against me, for your broken lava lamp we gave you!"

"Yikes! My phone did that yesterday! I left it sitting on the couch as I went to get water, in the middle of a cushion. When I turned around it was halfway across the room up against the box you sent Valentine stuff in."

"Where was the box? Did your phone go airborne? Or slither along the couch?"

"It had to go airborne, since the box was on the other side of my table."

"Well. It's a new phone, with special features you don't know about yet, I guess!"

"I'm sure it has nothing to do with the old brick of tiger iron I got from Great Grandma that I dug out from the bottom of my closet on Sunday." 

[I MUST remind The Pony about punctuation. I'm sure he meant that he dug the tiger iron out of the bottom of his closet, not Great Grandma. COMMAs, people, COMMAs!]

"I don't know what tiger iron is. Can you send me a picture? Why did you get it out? SPELLS???"

"No. I mentioned it to a friend and she wanted to see it. Sending you a stock photo."

"Mine's like a brick of it, with one end sloping down. I thought it was black marble for a long time. But mine, colorwise, looks a lot like this."

"I see it, but I don't remember it."

"She gave it to me way before she died. I kept it on the wooden rail above the couch downstairs for a long time."

"I vaguely remember a rock sitting there. FYI, I measured the distance of my Puffs flight, and it was 31 inches. As you know, not straight out, as if falling over the edge, but diagonal. Right at me!"

"Wow!"

"Beat THAT, S9!"

"The table, you must know, is about the same, and my phone surpassed the table's distance."

"I guess aerodynamics is more of a factor for unseen entities, rather than weight."

"I suppose."

I can't explain the flying Puffs box. Nor can The Pony explain the flying Galaxy S9.
It is what it is.