Monday, October 11, 2004

Safety glass, when it breaks, makes a noise different from other glass. It's not like the satisfying shattery crash from when you drop something in the kitchen, but it also isn't the deeper, stunted thwack of windshield glass. Safety glass wants to explode dramatically into a zillion feet-sticking shards, but that's not in its nature. So what it does is, it waits. It cracks a little bit at a time so that you can hear it cracking, sounding like ice in a cup, building the suspense. And then just when you give up and decide it's not going to do anything at all, it falls in a sheet that disintegrates along the way. Sure, it crashes a little bit. But it also tinkles a little bit too.

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