Squishing Sylvia

Schematic by Sean E. Woods

Sylvia, for some unfathomable reason, loves doing the laundry. Unfortunately, this is a dangerous love, for roughly a quarter of the volume of our laundry room is full of comic books, in long cardboard boxes piled precariously to the ceiling.

Fortunately, the heavy boxes are reinforced in such a manner that the odds of a catastrophic collapse are low. A long, heavy coffee table, tilted on its side, acts as a bulwark against disaster, shoring up the comic boxes.

My brother is currently in need of a coffee table, and at first I thought perhaps I could loan him the one in the laundry room. But after Sean and I examined the situation together, we realized that to risk the structural integrity of the precariously positioned collection of funnybooks - not to mention Sylvia's structural integrity - was foolish. Sean's detailed schematic of the situation (above) should make our problem clear.

How long will the coffee table keep the boxes safely in place? Who knows? Sometimes I worry that I'll come home one day and Sylvia's limbs will be sticking out from under a pile of torn cardboard and scattered comics. An ironic end for the girlfriend of a geek, to be sure, but one cannot go about risking human lives willy-nilly for the sake of an elegant dramatic turn.

Looks like I may need to build some shelves.