Friday, April 29, 2011

854 Meet Thy Neighbor

854 Meet Thy Neighbor

(MT. TANTAMOUNT, PA) -- Here’s how to not make friends in the neighborhood.

We drive onto our street, and simultaneously take out the clicker to open the garage door and click it while we’re maybe half a block from our house in the Cutsie Condo Development.

We enter the garage and close the door and less than a minute later, the doorbell rings. There stands Granny, vaguely familiar, who says “may I ask you a favor?” She goes on to say that when our garage door opens, so does hers, and would we please wait until reaching the actual unit before pushing the button?

“I was standing in the garage with the door closed and suddenly it opened,” she said. “Same kind of thing the other day.”

Garage door openers send code to a receiver on the motor. It’s a long string of digits usually unknown to the user. The string of numbers has no limit, hence the number of codes have no limit.

In disbelief, we go outside and from a distance try the opener. Sure enough, it opens ours and closes hers at the same time.

About now, Grandpa arrives. Everyone’s smiling. Everyone’s thinking “what’s the matter with these people.”

Turns out, Granny and Grandpa’s openers failed and like everything else that breaks at Cutsie Condos (and that’s almost everything,) it can’t be directly replaced. So gramps goes out and buys a generic opener, programs it for his door and everything seems fine. Until they recognize this quirk.

“So you try your clicker and see if it works on my door,” he’s told. He does. It doesn’t. This is an uncomfortable position in which to be, heaven forbid the guy gets burglarized. Who’s going to be Suspect Number Uno? Right.

We’ve both been in our houses for the same number of years. He doesn’t want us to do anything, and we shouldn’t have to. And in Cutsie, it’s not a good idea to fool with anything until it breaks -- which, eventually, it will.

Nice folks, these. Until someone gets in to their garage and swipes a case of beer and the grandkids’ tricycles.




Shrapnel (certification edition):

--Since Obama has released his birth certificate (why didn’t he do that three years ago?) it’s time for all of us to certify something or other, so here’s mine: I do solemnly swear that I did not make up the story of the Kings Point cameras (Wessay™ #853,) nor the one about the street smoking ban in its neighbor to the south, Great Neck Village (#806 Shrapnel.) Is all that clear?

--With the birth certificate issue put to rest, the wingnuts are moving on to a new conspiracy, saying the President wasn’t a good enough student to get into Columbia and then Harvard Law and did so only because he’s black, and where are the transcripts? And while you’re at it Mr. President, mind releasing a photo copy of your licenses? Start with drivers’, marriage and the papers for your kids’ dog (if they’re really your kids and “Bo” is really a dog.



I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com.
© WJR 2011

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