A while after I went to bed one night, there was a minor jolt. It felt as if the bed had been shaken. Freights rumbling past make vibrations that I can feel through the floor or the walls, but I usually miss out on the power going by in the night.

This unexpected sensation was different. It reminded me of an incident several years ago. I was at work, and other people in the department had already gone home. Something happened that felt as though a person had come up behind me and jerked my chair. I turned around, but no one else was in the room or even in nearby areas. Outside it was sunny, with no hint of a thunderstorm. After I left the building, I found out that people were talking about an earth tremor, so I had an explanation for the experience.

What I felt in bed impressed me as being more localized. Brought back to consciousness by an unknown cause when I had almost drifted off for the night, I lay there very still until I could think rationally. In the darkness, the thought of devilish powers at work occurred to me, but I didn't want to focus on that possibility. I decided something must have hit the mattress and it was time to investigate.

I discovered that my neglected bicycle, faithfully standing next to the wall for weeks and months, had tipped over on the floor. I reached for the handlebars, which had hit the bed, and set the bike upright again, wondering why it had fallen at that particular time. I may have draped a pair of long, heavy socks over the seat that evening, which isn't unusual, but I didn't remember moving the bike at any recent time. Searching for a probable culprit in the disturbance, I lifted the curtains to see if a train might be disappearing in the distance, but it was too late to know.

I didn’t find a clear answer to why the bicycle lost its balance on the kickstand and interrupted my night's sleep. I simply concluded that the potential was there and somehow the physics of the situation must have been right to make it happen. Similarly, an icicle falls, a boulder tumbles down a slope, an avalanche occurs.

Potentials came to my attention again as I looked through a stack of old periodicals. They had potential for recycling into more paper. Before I sent them on their way, however, I clipped out potential entertainment for a relative. A clue at the top of one puzzle said, "Potential raisin." I liked that one. I knew the answer.

That suggested a whole new spectrum of potentials. The kitchen cabinets, for example, have potential meals. There are boxes of potential mashed potatoes, potential pudding and potential hot chocolate.

The oven has potential heat, and the faucets suggest potential water. Buds on the potted bulbs conceal potential flowers, while the leaves have potential for growth.

In the next room, lamps offer potential light. The bookshelves are full of potential recreation, inspiration and answers to questions besides those about falling bicycles.

The television is a potential source of information, entertainment and potential regrets about time spent watching what's there.

Chairs provide potential seating. Desks and tables are potential work areas, except for being partly covered with potential or actual junk.

The loveseat, with a folding mattress, doubles as a potential bed without the potential for a bicycle problem. The swivel rocker is also potential sleeping space, with or without unfolding it first.

The piano has potential for music and noise, but most notably for storage space on top, and the potential piling material is almost unlimited.

Moving around the corner in the household tour, there's the telephone as a potential contact with the outside world, a potential source of conversation and a potential annoyance. The coat rack is almost hidden in potential warmth for cold days. The bed offers potential rest until the potential bump in the night.

But my favorite in the quick list of household potentials is one of the first that came to mind. The thought wasn't entirely original. I just had to rearrange someone else's joke. Along the walls, especially in the upper regions where the empty spaces intersect with the ceiling, there is great potential. It's like a handyman seeing possibilities in a house that needs fixing up, except that eight-legged creatures are the experts in this case. While computers make themselves at home elsewhere, the corners in the bedroom are top-ranked as potential web sites.