The Garage Door Mystery

            Yesterday our garage door started opening and shutting every few minutes. Jesus, who I’d hired to help me with some yard work, pointed it out to me with a look of puzzled concern. I doubted what he told me until it happened while I was standing next to him.

            My first thought was that Kim was playing with the remote that we keep in the coat closet so we can open the doors from the house. I had no theory as to why Kim might play with the remote, but I figured it was better than her raking wet leaves or moving rocks around using her repaired but sore back. She might have been doing it just to mess with me – she enjoys doing that – but not Jesus, who she had just met. I thought briefly about asking her if she were playing with the remote, but I thought better of it.

            I then checked to see if something was blocking the door that would cause it to pop open instead of crushing a squirrel or precious antique we were preparing for our garage sale. No, nothing there, and besides, that would not explain why the door would suddenly open after sitting closed for three minutes, or spontaneously close itself.

            “I know,” I told Kim, “I bet Karen has her remote in her purse, and it’s bumping against something.” Karen and Ted, our neighbors, had been parking in our garage for a couple of weeks while a bathtub was waiting in their garage. Kim told me that they had returned the remote a couple of days ago. I was doubtful because I didn’t remember that, and because I did not want to abandon a perfectly logical theory.

            I went inside and checked the extra remotes (the garage doors came with about six) that I stored in one of my Junk Drawers. I saw that one of them was lying button down, which might somehow be activating the doors, so I turned it over: problem solved?

            Nope – the door opened itself again.

            We had given a door opener to Scott, but he was several hundred miles away, and though the openers have pretty good range . . ..

            I decided that it made good sense to stand there and stare at the garage doors. Maybe I would detect a clue as to what was up in my universe. Could it be Donald Trump? Hilary Clinton? Could global warming somehow be responsible? A shift in the earth’s magnetic field? Maybe we had a tourist attraction on our hands, like the Mystery Spot in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

            Kim called to me from the house with a somewhat satisfied look on her face. She was holding a garage door remote. Someone had put Karen and Ted’s returned remote into the pocket of my pants before Kim put them in the washing machine, and the remote had been tumbling around in the dryer, bumping the button every once in a while. I like to think that the satisfied look on Kim’s face was caused by her solving the garage door mystery and not by her again confirming my domestic carelessness.

            Today’s project is to install our new video doorbell, complete with motion detector. Who knows what mysteries this will reveal?


Comments:

From Fleda Brown: "It could have been Jesus, though. It’s that time of year, raising and all, you know."

From John Bayerl: "Since it was Jesus who said the door is risen. . .???"