On How I Was Almost Just Killed By a Lamp

A few minutes ago I was just sitting on the couch minding my own business watching Leverage like I do every Tuesday evening, petting my cat Mouse who was sleeping on my chest, while my roommate J was rearranging furniture, like she does on occasion. I have this big old floor lamp that's been broken for a while, it still works but doesn't stand straight up. Something broke on the base so it has to lean up against something or else falls over. It's right next to the couch, in front of a bookcase that I've had it leaning up against for months. Well, J was doing some rearranging to make a clothes rack fit on the other side of the bookcase, and she just had to try to fix the broken lamp, because she's kind of OCD like that. So she fiddles with it for a while, and we discuss the poor broken lamp's tenuous future (chucked out when I move, most likely) until she exclaims "Oh! Look! It's fixed!" I look up to see her triumphantly moving away from the lamp, which is now standing straight up, all by itself. I congratulate her, then go back to watching my show. She moves away and goes into her room to get something, a minute later moving back to the door to her room, which is directly across from the couch I'm sitting on, and I hear some sort of incomprehensible exclamation, neither of us can remember just what it was that she said even though it only happened about 5 minutes ago, but somehow I got the message that the lamp was falling towards me and about to clock me on the head. I must have looked over and seen it coming for me, so I screamed and put my hands up over my head, completely panicking, and..........................................................................



the lamp just misses me, the top big bowl landing on the cushion right next to me. Then the adrenaline kicks in and J and I both start laughing hysterically. Of course, we occasionally do that anyways, so there might not have actually been any adrenaline involved, but I think there was because if anything is going to trigger an adrenaline rush, it's a near-death experience. And maybe the lamp wouldn't have actually, literally, killed me (although I still maintain that it had it in for me) but at the time I certainly thought so, so I think that qualifies as a near-death experience.