Okay...

I was using KDE and I had two windows of Opera Open and
then I click out of both of the kina fast -- and then
all of a sudden, the entire desktop went away!!!

The Mouse didn't lock up NOR did the Keyboard...
But I couldn't access anything, nothing was there,
since I didn't know what to do, I hit the RESET button
and I understand that -that is a 'no-no'.

So my question is this: If that instance occurs again,
which I hope it doesn't, what should OR I guess what can
I do, any suggestions???

Even tried hitting the windoze button to get the KDE
menu to pop-up..to no avail...

those big closde source programs sem to have a habit of doing things like that.

To kill X only: Ctrl+ALT+BACKSPACE

Once you've killed X (by doing the above) try restarting it by typing startx.