Title of the Story: 

 The Night the Bed Fell

Story Source Material:

Story written by James Thurber (c.1933) and published with permission in ADVENTURES FOR READERS, BOOK 2. New York: Harcourt Brace & World, Inc., 1958.Found, additionally, on various Internet sites.

Taletype Classification of the Story: 

Autobiographical short story

Story Rating: 

General Audience

Abstract/Summary

The father in a rather eccentric household decides one evening to sleep in the attic in order to have some time to himself to think. His wife, very much opposed to this idea, believes the bed in the attic is unsafe and might fall on him. He pays his wife no mind and thus ignites a humorous chain of events that are aggravated by his highly suggestible children, their nervous visiting cousin, and a wife who, when speaking to her children, ever thereafter erroneously refers to the experience as “the night the bed fell on your father.”