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The zipper on my jacket broke. It wasn't exactly a life-threatening crisis, but it did mean that we would have to drive all the way to the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood to exchange it.
It was Sunday morning when we decided to make the trip. We walked out to the garage and pressed the garage door opener, only to hear a scary grinding noise. After a few more attempts it was established that the garage door opener was broken, and that our cars were trapped in the garage. We would never be able to ever go anywhere again! Then we figured out that there is a lever you can pull that will allow you to open the garage door manually. I walked around to the front of the garage to find that a neighbor kid had seen fit to write the "F" word on our garage door. No, not "Forensics" or "Fluoride," but the other "F" word that I would have used in a situation like this except it would have been redundant. I chose to blaspheme instead. The good news is that the offending word had been smudged onto the garage door with mud. Amateurs! I thought. We had been hit by a thug in training -- someone not quite ready for the big time, someone who would key our car, if only he could get a set of keys from mom or dad. I can see them trying to pull it off: "Why do you need the keys son?" "Uh, er... I can't start my Big Wheel?" The next morning we would wake to find that our car had been finger-painted. We wouldn't be sure if it was vandalism or just a misplaced artistic impulse. Admittedly, I have been tempted myself to write obscenities on the garage door, but that's different. I often feel that way after "repairing" sprinklers. Notice that "repairing" is in quotation marks. The last time I did it and turned the sprinklers back on, one of the sprinklers shot ten feet in the air followed by a geyser of water. A neighbor kid riding by on his bike said, "Cool." My recollection of this was interrupted by another neighbor kid, who was about to cut across our lawn until he saw me standing in front of the garage door. I gave him a look that said "Don't even think about it you gangster baby punk thug." He looked baffled, as if he had heard my thoughts, and then stopped and walked around our yard. I'm sure he'll try and teach me a lesson. Maybe tomorrow we'll find a plastic horse's head in our mailbox. A sponge, some 409, and a lot of elbow grease later, the garage door was clean, open, and we were ready to hit the road. People were driving like they were insane. Actually that's not fair to insane people. Some insane people drive really well. Let's just say traffic was crazy. My wife, Sharron, suggested that perhaps we go back and sequester, even possibly barricade, ourselves in the house. Sharron has a better intuition about these things than I do. We managed to arrive safely at Universal Studios and Sharron asked me to double check to see if I had the receipt for the jacket. Sure, I did. It was with the Universal Passport I had brought with us to renew! I was very confident of this as I opened up the packet of papers. Prior to this moment, I had felt like the world was against me and that there was a slew of evil and incompetent people who were determined to make me miserable. As I fumbled for the receipt and realized that I had left it behind on a TV tray in the living room, I had the sinking feeling that comes with knowing that I was no different from the rest of the world. If someone else's incompetence didn't do me in, my own would. It should not come as a surprise that the good people at the Hard Rock Cafe Gift Shop wanted a receipt. We told them our story, minus the part about the busted garage door opener, the naughty neighbor kids, and the traffic. "We really need that receipt," they said. "We'd have to go back to Riverside to get it," I responded, and then I cried and immediately wet myself. They gave in. So the story has a happy ending: We got a new jacket, we set up an appointment to get the garage door opener fixed, and all the neighbor kids have been arrested. Everything is great! At least it was until I tried to install a scanner on my computer. But that's another story... |
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