Monday, March 5, 2012

Bookcase Warning

This happened in Montevideo, Uruguay when I was 13 or 14 years old (around 1980-81) at my parents' house. That house was actually my grandparents' house; my grandfather died a few months before my mother and father got married, so my grandmother asked them to stay and live with her, as it was a large house.

One day I had just arrived home from high school and had lunch. My mom and grandma had to run some errands, my father was at work, and my siblings were at school, so I was home alone. My dad had recently bought a huge radio-cassette player set. It was really cool! He told my brother and me again and again not to touch it. He put the radio-cassette player set on a shelf in a very big bookcase, placed in the living-room.

This is very important for the story: the bookcase was attached to the wall (still is) and it was impossible to move. Imagine a bookcase that goes from one wall to another and from floor to ceiling; the set was there, just inviting us to go and listen to the radio or play a cassette in it. Two shelves above it were two medium-sized pictures of my brother and me. These were that kind of printed-on-wood pictures and were rather heavy. They rested against some books.

That day, as I was home alone, I decided to use my father's radio-cassette player set. I turned it on, listened to the radio, recorded some songs, etc. Suddenly, the two wooden pictures fell over my head and ended on the floor. I was so scared I ran to my bedroom and shut the door. My heart was beating so fast!

After some time, I went back to the living room. The wooden pictures were still on the floor. I picked them up and placed them on their shelf. Then I tried to move the bookcase to make them fall again. Nothing happened. I tried to do all the things I could to make them fall again, to no avail. The pictures rested there, against the books. So, the thing is: it was impossible for them to fall over me by themselves!

To this day, I don't know what made them fall on my head. I just know I was doing something I wasn't supposed to do and I received a kind of warning, "Hey, leave your father's stuff alone!" Maybe it was my grandfather... I don't know.

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