Slam a door and it just might slam back
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- July 29, 2024
- 499
The British have a saying, “safe as houses,” but whoever coined that phrase never lived in a house.
The truth is houses are not safe because as many, if not more, accidents occur in our homes as on our highways. And houses don’t come equipped with seat belts and air bags.
The most perilous parts of houses are doors. These hinge-hung hazards are real menaces to life and limb. For instance, we suspected the bathroom door in our last house had homicidal tendencies. It preferred being closed, sticking to its frame like glue when we would try to open it.
One night Taller Half and that door had a fight. In the midst of that battle, the door released its grip on its frame, swung out at Taller Half and gave him a mighty crack on the head. That was a clear case of attempted murder.
One of our folding doors has a history of assault and battery. Every now and then, it would quietly slip off its track and wait to be opened. One pull on the knob and it came crashing down. It was not only disconcerting to be slammed by a door, but also it was rather painful.
A neighbor’s house was afflicted with a particularly vicious garage door. That thing would yawn open very slowly, then suddenly, without any warning, snap shut. Our poor neighbors, whose cars bore scars from encounters with that door, were driven to dire measures — they finally dipped into savings to get it fixed before something worse happened.
We were forced into a similar action with our kitchen door. It was a swinging, mischief-making, irritating invention of the devil. It caused more trouble than all the other doors combined.
It all began when I tried to leave the kitchen with a platter of fried chicken in my hand just as Taller Half pushed hard on the door to enter. The result was havoc. I screamed, the chicken flew off the platter and our dog got excited.
Taller Half reacted by grabbing a drumstick away from our dog. Then he unhinged and disposed of the troublemaker. It’s always best to deal decisively with difficult doors.