Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Curiosity Killed The Spider

I definitely had an adventure yesterday! Well, it wasn't so much of an adventure as it was just me doing something really random and weird. I tend to do that, and then call it an adventure. Okay, enough about me. I want to talk about my adventure!! So it all started when I moved into my room last year. There was this panel screwed into the wall. Still is, but at the time I sort of wondered what was behind it. Then I forgot about it. Then I noticed it again - this cycle happened quite frequently every few days. It wasn't necessarily an urgent matter; no, I was content to live in my room and just let the mysterious panel be on my wall. Then yesterday I couldn't take it anymore. I had to know! The chemistry was right: I had my curiosity, a toolbox in my closet, and plenty of time. So I took the dive and went for it. I pulled my toolbox down from it's shelf, dug out my phillips screwdriver, and pulled my bed away from the wall. You see, my head had been resting next to this panel every night for a year, and I never once had the motivation to actually see what was behind it. To tell you the truth, it was pretty slow going with the un-screwing. It had been painted over at some point, and despite the fact that this panel is probably there for a reason, I'm guessing no one had really bothered to use it in a while. So, I wore my forearms to the bone (or some such metaphor) working on THREE screws. Yeah, that's all it was, but it took me like an hour. Or probably ten minutes or so. Anyhow, when I finally got the panel off, I was majorly let down for a second because there was nothing but the backside of some insulation. As you can see from the picture, it looks like that would be the end of the road. Well, that might stop your average person taking their wall apart, but not me. I grabbed my hammer and started poking around. I obviously didn't want to go sticking my hand in there because who knew what kind of bugs and crap might come flying out at me. I literally had visions of Indiana Jones and the Mummy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and pretty much any kind of situation where I might inadvertently get turned into some sort of mutated freakish THING. . . (There I go with my super-long sentences. Sorry, I'm working on that.) So like I was saying, I started mashing the insulation around to see what was behind it. My dad always told me to not touch insulation with my bare hands because it was like cotton candy made with glass. I guess it's one of those things that looks delicious but you should stay days away from it. Just like dirt and bar soap. Mmm! Blech. I actually got a little nervous that I would get the crap from the insulation all over my room, so I got my roommate Michelle to come help me. We moved the insulation around and realized that there was a huge opening behind it! To be honest, we both sort of had the suspicion that there very well could be dead bodies and stuff back there. Or Narnia. But we were brave, and carried on. Michelle manned the flashlight while I took pictures. I was documenting the entire thing in case we actually found bodies, or treasure. But alas, there was nothing of interest other than just the sheer awesomeness of opening up my bedroom wall and finding lots and lots of spiderwebs and dirt. It was kind of a let-down, but later I realized that I had just done an incredible thing: I had discovered what the inside of the wall looks like! I did something that most people seldom do: I noticed an opportunity, I took a chance, and I explored the unknown.