Demon Possession

For the first time in my adult life, I have a garage. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. Although it would’ve been a helluva lot awesomer to have had a garage living in Erie where my morning routine 6 months out of the year would include getting up an extra 45 minutes early to shovel my car out of the snow drifts and chip the ice off the windows, in the bitterly cold dark. If ever there was a definition of Hell – that is it.

I’ve moved on.

And now have a garage at my disposal. A garage WITH an automatic garage door. An automatic garage door that is possessed by some obscure underworld demon of extreme evilness. None of our neighbors ever seem to have any trouble whatsoever with their garage doors. Nope. Just us. Our door will always open. Always. Whether opening by remote or by button in garage, it consistently and unfailingly always opens.

Closing is the issue.

You sort of have to keep an eye on it. But even keeping an eye on it doesn’t guarantee it will close. Frankly, it’s infuriating.

The demon door, it toys with you. It taunts you.

You are backing out of your garage, late for work, a bagel in one hand with cream cheese that is rapidly melting, coffee in the other. You carefully push the button on the remote praying to all that is good and holy it closes on the first try. But of course it doesn’t. The door descends but a fraction, hesitates, winks at you evilly and climbs back up. You brake. You curse the demon door. You try to close it again while your neighbor smoothly pulls her Lexus out of the garage next to you and closes the door with an effortlessness that makes you want to flip her off while smearing melted cream cheese on her windshield.

Instead, you smile and shrug and focus all of your energy at the garage door, “close you sonofabitch! I swear if you don’t close, there will be hell to pay – HELL TO PAY!” This time, it jerkily, stubbornly descends and you sigh a sigh of relief, put the car back into reverse and are nearly out of the driveway, when the door sneers at you and slowly starts to open again.

“muther fucker!” You slam on the brakes, threatening the demon door with bodily injury if it doesn’t fucking close.

And people at work wonder why I’m so grouchy in the morning.