As injuries go, the cut on my right index finger isn't exactly newsworthy.

It's not very big, either: maybe the length of an eyelash, or a broken pencil lead, or a grain of uncooked rice. But the wound is deep, and it is positioned uncomfortably close to the knuckle, which makes immobilizing it impossible, and even though I've got it securely swathed in Neosporin and about a bazillion miles' worth of gauze today, I can still feel it throbbing, right through the bandage.

I'd forgotten how nasty a glass-cut can be.

Especially broken window glass.

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I wasn't deliberately trying to break the bedroom window last night ... I swear to god, I wasn't. I'd like to think that my days of dramatic, glass-related injuries are a thing of the past. (It's been three years since I fell off a chair and landed on top of a wine glass. It's been two years since I've thrown anything breakable. And once you've drunkenly put your arm through a window for dramatic effect  -- three times -- you pretty much don't want to do it again.)

All I wanted, last night, was for that big teenaged doofus to quit bouncing his stoopid basketball.

I figured that a couple of quick, sharp raps on our bedroom window -- accompanied by a stern, "Yo! People are trying to sleep in here, you big Teenaged Doofus!" -- might do the trick. It was after 10 p.m., after all. By that point David and I had been laying in our bed listening to the steady thwap thwap thwap of his basketball hitting the sidewalk, right outside our window, for more than two hours.

Enough was enough.

It hadn't been so bad while we were watching TV, earlier in the evening. Yes, we could hear him bouncing his basketball ... and yes, we could hear his little giggling gaggle of female admirers, and yes, we could smell their cigarette smoke wafting in through the open window occasionally ... and yes, it was annoying as hell ... but "Malcolm in the Middle" and "That 70's Show" sort of drowned him out. Plus it was still early, and we were in the middle of a weekend heatwave, and it was a school night ... and we figured that eventually he would get bored or distracted or tired, or his Mommy would call him in to do his homework, or his Spaulding would spring a leak, and he would move along to annoy the neighbors farther down the road. We were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And in fact he DID go away, for a while. Right after David and I turned off the TV and kissed each other goodnight, we listened in relief as the incredibly-annoying bouncing ball and its owner (and his entourage) all headed off in another direction. Blissful silence ensued.

I began the slow, delicious slide into sleep.

But a few minutes later: there it was again. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. The sound of a basketball determinedly dribbling its noisy, echoing way back up the sidewalk towards our apartment building, eventually coming to land again directly outside our bedroom window, just a few feet away from where we lay. With the TV turned off and the window open, the sound was now cannonball-loud.

THWAP. Sound of teenage girls giggling. THWAP. Sound of indecipherable teenage boy mutterings.THWAP. THWAP. Cigarette smoke. 

THWAPTHWAPTHWAPTHWAP.

What can I tell you? Something in me just snapped. I was hot. I was tired. I was painfully premenstrual. David had managed to escape into sleep: I figured there was no sense in disturbing him. I could handle this. So I yanked the curtains to one side, glared out the window at the idiot teenagers ... and rapped sharply on the window.  To my complete astonishment, the glass sort of bent outward for a split second ... 

... and then it simply wasn't there anymore.

I was shocked by how easily it shattered. It was like putting my hand through a layer of cheap plastic wrap. I was shocked, too, by how LOUD the sound of breaking glass can be at 10:30 p.m. on a hot summer night. Much louder than, say, a basketball bouncing on pavement.

Luckily the broken glass fell outside, onto the sidewalk, and not inside, onto the bed where David and I were laying. The idiot teenagers looked at me in surprise. They must have thought I was insane: first, this crazy woman in purple pajamas and wild eyes smashes the window with her hand ... and then she glares at them through the broken glass, saying "Quit. Bouncing. That. God. Damn. Basket. Ball."

I know I felt a little insane at that particular moment.

The living room was dark and hot when I woke up, just after 5 a.m. this morning. It was like waking up in a coffin.

I hadn't expected to sleep at all. After we rinsed the blood off my hand last night, making sure I wasn't going to need stitches, I carried my pillow and blanket to the other room and made my bed on the hard little sofa. David understood: I couldn't sleep under that stoopid broken window. He took a moment to soothe and reassure me (It wasn't your fault: don't worry about it), before we kissed goodnight for the second time and reluctantly parted company. I fully expected to spend the entire night tossing and turning and watching the ceiling, but sometime shortly before midnight I drifted off and slept a mostly-dreamless sleep.

When I woke up, I felt like I was being pressed between two warm slices of bread.

I tiptoed into the bedroom, where David lay snoring, and slipped into bed next to him. The room was deliciously cool, thanks no doubt to our spontaneous new *ventilation system.*  I managed to squeeze in an extra forty minutes of snooze-time before I was obligated to get up and start getting ready for another day of work.

When David got up, I apologized again. And again. "I wasn't trying to break the window," I said. It was important to me that he know that, and that he understand that this wasn't an example of Old Dysfunctional Secra behavior. Old Dysfunctional Secra never met a window she wouldn't break if it bought her a little attention.

"I know you weren't," he replied. "It was just really thin glass." And he said he would call the landlord this afternoon, and we would have the window replaced, and that would be the end of that. Naturally, I plan to pay for it.

Later, we drove past the front of the apartment building on our way to work. I cringed visibly when I saw our poor shattered window. 

"Thin glass," David said again.

I nodded. Pretty deceptive stuff, that thin glass: it looks a lot stronger than it really is. It gives the illusion of being solid and sturdy and dependable. But if you hit it the wrong way ... it shatters.

Just like *me* this week.