Explosion.

My wife came running over to the cellar stairs. She flung the door open in fear of what she would see. She had heard the loud curse, the thump, thump, POW, and imagined the worst. "Are you all right?" she cried.

"Watermelon," I said.

I was fortunate that I had not suffered a terrible fall on the steps, as our friend Mongo had some weeks back. It was not me that was making the loud sounds of crashing, but the watermelon that had popped out from my left arm as I reached for the doorknob with my right.

Our garage leads to the cellar stairs, so most of the time groceries are brought up that way. I had just returned from the supermarket and several of the bags were still at the base of the steps. And now, so too was an exploded watermelon.

If you've never bounced a watermelon down a flight of stairs, let me tell you, it is not easy to clean up. I had my back to it as it was going down, so I did not see its trajectory, but the thing seems to have bounced twice before it shattered on the third step from the bottom and sent watermelon bits flying. I say this because half of it wound up under the stairs, in one big hunk and a thousand little pieces, while the rest landed at the foot of the stairs. I had expected to see a simple blast site, but it must have split, partly ricocheted off the wall, and scattered in two spots. I think it would have taken the splatter experts at CSI: Produce to figure it out.

An exploded watermelon is a hell of a thing to clean up. I don't know how Gallagher's people do it. It took me a large number of Lysol wipes, a heavily filled trash can, the disposal of a doormat, washed-off groceries, and I still think we have a fifty-fifty chance of ant infestation.

Now, I know I could have avoided this if I had carried the watermelon up by itself. But come on. It is the way of my people -- those people being males.

It's amazing I didn't have all the groceries plus a watermelon in my arms.

I would say this whole thing was a learning experience, but I can't tell for sure until the next time I'm bringing home a watermelon from the store. Will I carry the watermelon on its own or try to jump back on that ol' hoss? I could say that I learned what kind of a mess a watermelon makes when you bounce it down the stairs, but I think I might have guessed that. I will say that if your buddy ever tells you, "Hey, let's see what happens when we bounce a watermelon down your basement stairs!" you tell him you would prefer not to.