The Universe is Doomed...

...and it's my fault. Well, sort of. Let me tell you about it.

My kitchen garbage disposal has acted up lately, requiring the motor to be cranked and reset. To do this, one needs an Allen wrench. Lacking one of sufficient size, I booked on over to Lowe's, purchased a set, and figured I was good to go. And in a healthy, normal, sane universe, by rights, I would have been.

It happened thusly:

I inserted a quarter-inch Allen wrench into the socket in the bottom of the disposal unit. It fit nicely, so I attempted to turn it counter-clockwise, in prescribed fashion. Alas, the damned thing wouldn't budge. I gave it another good tug, and the freaking Allen wrench slipped out of my hand and vanished into the darkness of the cabinet beneath the sink. Oddly, it made no sound. You'd think nice-sized hunk of metal making contact with any number of hard surfaces would make a racket. But it didn't.

I proceeded to remove some items from the cabinet. Boxes of aluminum foil, waxed paper, sandwich bags, and garbage bags. Bottles of cleaning solutions, bug spray, lamp oil. A basket of dust rags, steel wool, and Swiffer cleaning pads. Vases. Jars. Where did all this stuff come from? What do you know — there's that can of WD-40 I'd been looking for a while back.

The Allen wrench is nowhere to be seen.

OUT comes everything. Every last item in the cabinet. I'm shaking out rags, dumping sandwich bags out of their boxes, unrolling foil and waxed paper... searching, searching, searching... and I'm yelling, "Where are you, you vile fuck?" I check the rug around the outside of the cabinet. Under the kitchen table. Around the refrigerator. In my shoes.

The damned thing isn't there. It isn't anywhere.

Suffice it to say, there was not one item, not one object, not one space I didn't turn inside out looking for that Allen wrench. There is but one explanation, and that is that the little metal bastard slipped into a wormhole and is now drifting through parallel time and space, aimed at the center of everything, where it's going to collide with something and destroy reality as we know it. And you're all gonna blame me. Look, I'm telling you, I'm sorry, I hunted EVERYWHERE, and it still disappeared.

So, prepare yourselves; this the end coming... unless Droolie somehow happens upon the thing. Wouldn't surprise me if I get up some morning, and the little fuck wrench will be on the kitchen floor because Droolie has managed to fish it out of some nonexistent dimension.

On the up side, I then tried a metric Allen wrench — the 6mm, I think — and it worked like a charm. At least, when the universe goes, I can grind up all the pieces in the garbage disposal. And I have a very clean and nicely organized kitchen cabinet.

I guess that's the way to go.