How'd that happen?

Actually, I know how it happened. I'd just finished applying about a half-gallon of moisturizer to my aged skin, and I guess my fingers were still a little bit slickery.

So when I took the top off my little bottle of foundation and shook it upside down to bring the makeup down to my fingers, the bottle suddenly flew out of my grasp and sailed high up into the air and across the bedroom, looking like something Ty Cobb might have flung, with deadly accuracy, at home plate.

Only, of course, as the bottle merrily twirled its way through the room, it was dispensing copious amounts of Cool Beige on the pale yellow matelasse coverlet, my clothes, the folded quilt that sits on the end of the bed, some clean laundry that was sitting on the little table at the end of the bed and the carpet. It almost took out my husband's clean and carefully pressed white dress shirt, which he had just put on, still warm from the iron, but he did this incredible, slow-motion Matrix-like movement where his entire body moved in a backwards arc, his legs kicking up in the air and his arms going out in front of him so that he was momentarily suspended in the air, shaped like the letter C.

"Nice moves, Neo," I said, laughing really hard.

"Geez, what happened?" he asked incredulously, picking up the bottle and surveying the damage. It looked like a L'Oréal factory had just exploded.

"I was shaking the bottle and it flew out of my hand," I replied, dabbing at my eyes and feeling thankful that I hadn't yet put on mascara. Because, ouch? There's nothing like a little mascara in your eyes to make you understand that it could be used as an effective substitute for tear gas, if rioters would be willing to come up close to the police, have their eyelashes coated and then get a spritz of water right in the face.

"Is it safe to give this back to you?" he asked, holding the makeup bottle out to me gingerly. "You know, you might want to try shaking it with the lid on, Grace."

I tried to get my husband to do his Letter C maneuver again, but he huffily told me that it was a one off and that I should quit joking around and trying to show him how he looked and get busy helping him clean up the mess.