For The Want Of A Nail

Our house has been broken into before, and since then, we have taken a few measures to ensure that we don't have endure that feeling of violation and fear again: Security lights, laser beams, shark-infested moat. Nothing, of course, is a sure thing since if someone decides they really want in they can shoot out the lights, block the lasers with an intricate series of mirrors and brave the moat in shark-proof chain mail swim trunks. If somebody really wants in, they're coming in. These were the thoughts I had as I stared at the floor of our bathroom. Wreckage was strewn all the way from the doorway to my son's room to just outside ours. Broken glass and bits of plastic, it could only have been the work of some dastardly intruder, who came to relieve us of anything we had left after our last burglary, and who obviously had little or no aesthetic sense. The wreckage was that of the neon art piece my younger brother had created for my fiftieth birthday.
Had I foolishly left a door ajar? Did the interloper squeeze through the impossibly thin gap left at the bottom of our bathroom window? Suddenly I found myself consumed with thoughts of Abbey Road. There I stood, without even the protection of a silver spoon. I was little afraid, but mostly I was devastated. If someone had wanted to come in and steal my wallet, my car keys, my TV, I could have lived with those losses. I would have replaced them. This was an object d' art, and I wasn't going to head on down to Target to pick another original neon creation up over the weekend. This was a loss.
Then, after a minute or two of this angry reckoning, it began to dawn on me what had happened. There had been no home entry, other than my own. I was just looking at the consequence of poorly mounted artwork. Two years ago, when I had been presented with this lovely gift, I was in such a tizzy to get it up on the wall to for all to see, I had done a less than perfect job figuring out the load-bearing strength of the screw I used to affix this one of a kind monument to me to the wall. At some point during the day, while we were all out, that screw and the little piece of plastic that was supposed to expand and keep their conjoined presence stuck in the drywall, gave up. Out came the screw, down came all that glass, metal, and plastic, and what was left wasn't so much art as mess. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I only wish that my little brother and I had a chance to watch the catastrophe happen, one last hurrah of a performance piece as my fiftieth birthday came crashing down in a shower of debris.
I'm keeping the pieces. Maybe they can be turned into something new again. If not another piece of glowing art, maybe a new feature in my home security system.