Weird Thing Happened on my Laptop?

Last night I was typing on my laptop and all of a sudden, it went black, then flickered on again, then black, then flickered on again. I type very fast and don't know if I hit a key or something to make it do that, but it was just the strangest thing, so I pressed the power button to turn it off. When I turned it back on, the appearance of my screen was whacked. I changed the resolution and that helped some, but it still looks weird. I have no idea what happened and I don't know how to change it back to the way it was before. It's like my fonts look fat and more bold and my background photo now won't fit on the screen. It's like my graphics are all off and I don't know how to check to see if that's the problem and if it is, I don't know how to change it back to the way it was before. I've looked in the control panel under "appearance" and don't see where I can make any changes. Any ideas on what I can do, or what may have happened in the first place?