Certain things in life are a mystery. A quick cure for the common cold. The number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. And our automatic garage door.
On dark days, it rides up and down flawlessly with the touch of a button. But on sunny mornings, about 9:45, the garage light flickers, the motor scratches its head, and the whole contraption wavers. Up or down? Off or on? It can’t decide.
“We can fix it,” shrugged Stargazer, my astronomer-fiance, who knows about all things light and dark. “There’s obviously some problem with the light beam.”
That was about six months ago. And we are still hitting the remote, running back inside, disarming the security system, holding down the button on the doorframe, resetting the system, rushing out the front door before it goes off, and scrambling to find the key.
It’s not for lack of trying. We have Googled, chatted with repair people, called a service or two, and – in a rare show of desperation on my part – read the manual. Nothing has helped.
“I can’t fix my garage door!” others moan from chat rooms, to which mechanics respond, “Adjust the beam,” to which the moaners respond, “It doesn’t help.”
Neither does scouring the area for spider webs or, in our case, building a little box around the mechanism that holds the thing that generates the beam. Whatever that is called.
“I know,” said Stargazer the other day. “We could switch the side the beam is on.” This seemed consistent with the manual’s warning: “Do not install the beam facing the sun.” But the idea of actually detaching a couple of mechanisms and trying to line them up to see each other across a double garage seemed daunting.
I was considering being very zen about the whole thing and just “letting it go” like I did with the doorbell in my first home that used to go off every time I stepped on a floorboard outside the bathroom. After awhile, I got used to it.
And with the garage door, I suppose I could either let it go or lift it up manually.
But then I heard another life coach talk about something called “tolerations” – aggravating things we tolerate – and how they can drain our energy.
“Think about your tolerations and take steps to remedy them,” she instructed.
With that, I was off and running again.
I have tried to cheer myself up with the thought that children are particularly safe here, even if they have a penchant for running under garage doors, and that I have a particularly good excuse for being late to 10 a.m. meetings. Except now, I suppose, I have ruined that by announcing to the world that I am well aware it takes an extra 10 minutes to exit the premises.
Even so, I think it’s worth going public because some 11 year old may get wind of my plight and create some sort of “light deflector” for the next Invention Convention. He will likely win a prize, get it patented and dash the hopes of other children who, like mine, came to the competition with birdseed carriers on wheels and nonworking models of ingredient detectors to read box labels.
I certainly hope he does. I will be the first to buy one. I’m not sure I can handle my newfound energy.
Copyright 2014 Pat Snyder
