The Spot-Hole

Today I'm in the bathroom at work and I'm staring at the wall -- for reasons you can guess -- and I notice a little point of light.

So I look closer at it and it appears to be a small hole in the bathroom wall, about a millimeter in diameter, but when I move my head a bit the light disappears.

To make sure it isn't just a shiny fleck of paint I cup my hands around the spot...and it continues to glow. It's a bright speck buried in the darkness of my hands. It really does look like a hole.

Workmate Charles wanders over to find out why I'm lurking around the toiletries and I show him the spot, and he cups his hands around it and says "Yeah, I think it's a hole," though he also notices the way it seems to reflect a bit, as though a flake of paint were covering it slightly. Another workmate -- Matthew -- sees us acting all suspicious and so he looks too and he confirms...yes, could be a small hole, very strange.

A hole in the bathroom wall.

I leave and get a pencil from my cubicle and come back to confirm the theory; I want to poke the spot and see if the pencil goes in. I walk up to the wall...

...and I can't find the spot. I search around and around. I cup my hands and look all over. The situation is complicated by the style of the paint, which is deliberately bumpy. I call Charles back and we look together and neither of us can see anything. Meanwhile the automatic toiletries are flushing like crazy because we keep standing in front of them.

By now we have collected a small bathroom mob. Workmate Don turns off the light while I stand in front of the wall, but I can't see anything. We ascertain out where the hole should exit -- an unused, dimly-lit storage area behind the elevator -- and we search that wall as well...nothing. Just in case there WAS a fleck of paint slightly covering the hole, I get a wet paper towel and start wiping at the wall, hoping to dislodge it. Nothing.

We sit around and stare at each other. Either the little hole got covered up somehow, or it was a remarkably reflective piece of material that fell off, or we just forgot where exactly we'd been looking.

It is an unsolved mystery. Like a UFO. In the bathroom.