Do you know what's really hot? When Keith knows stuff.Last weekend, we went to a hardware store because I'd completely destroyed my garage door opener. This isn't the first time—for some reason, I occasionally feel as if the surface is coated in oil, and I drop the opener and it breaks into many pieces.
The first time it happened, Keith put it back together again right away. The next time, he had already left for work and I couldn't get it working again on my own, so the car was trapped in the garage. It was like a logic puzzle: if you can't open your garage door, how do you get it out? Keep in mind:
--We have no entry into the garage other than the two main garage doors. No side entrance for people.
--Both garage doors are operated electronically. I've never tried to open mine manually, but I don't know of a manual override so I assume bad things would happen.
--Keith and I each have one garage door opener, which opens our side. So I can't open Keith's side when he's not home, and vice versa.
I was puzzling over this dilemma when I saw my neighbor heading out to his car, and I hijacked him and made him take me to work.
After that fiasco, Keith once again got the garage door opener working. But I swore that we would go and get back-up openers this time. REALLY. Because we all knew it was only a matter of time until it happened again .....
Fast forward a mere few weeks to the first snow of the season, slippery back steps, and a garage door opener that is broken for a third time as I slid down the steps. I was fine, but this time the garage door opener could not be revived. Luckily, I had opened the garage door before I'd left the house, so I could still pull my car out and press the button inside the garage to close the door.
But it also meant that, for the rest of the week, our morning routine went like this.
1) Keith opens his garage door and leaves the opener in the kitchen. He leaves for work.
2) I take Keith's opener with me. I walk in his garage, press the button to open my door, pull the car out, and press the buttons to close both garage doors.
Then in the afternoon, I use the garage door opener to open Keith's side, hop out of the car to press the interior button to open my door, and then pull in.
So REALLY this time, we went to the hardware store to get new garage door remotes. (Never thought I'd get back to the main point of the story, did you?)
While we were at the store, Keith had a few questions for the salespeople. This hardware store was somewhat out of the way for us, so we wanted to be sure we had the right equipment the first time. After finding what we thought we needed, we spent twice as long trying to find a salesperson.
Our first target was an elderly gentleman. Keith started asking about dip switches and different model openers. Salesguy immediately professed to know nothing about garage door openers and found another colleague who claimed to be an expert.
And yet, when Keith repeated his somewhat technical but comprehensible question about programming these universal remotes for different brands, salesguy #2's face blanked over. He assured us the ones we'd chosen would work fine, but we were less than convinced by his expertise.
Keith was mildly peeved when we left, because he couldn't get answers to his questions. But I was thinking how adorable he looked when he was peeved, and when he was stumping the expert with his "dip switches" and "circuit boards." He's a keeper.
Oh, and the new garage door openers work fabulously!
No comments:
Post a Comment