Wednesday, February 15, 2012

From Another Galaxy, Far Far Away

We were still living in the house in the country when man first walked on the moon.  There were lots of people who did not believe this was possible and that it was just a stunt thought up by the government and Hollywood.  Even Edward, who is generally pretty open minded (okay that part is a lie), refused to believe it was possible to get a spaceship all the way to the moon, some men were able to get out of the spaceship and walk around uncharted territory, and then those same men were still alive and able to get their spacecraft safely back to earth.  No, he was not believing any of this and he proclaimed it adamantly to the news reporter who called us randomly to see what we thought.  In all fairness to hard headed Edward, he actually thought it was his sister playing a trick on him but it sure kept us from being interviewed ever again.

I, on the other hand, believe not only was it possible to travel in outer space but I had first hand knowledge of this extraordinary discovery.  No I was never an astronaut but we were "visited" by a spaceship when I was a teenager. 

One summer morning when I was about fifteen my father came home from the night shift at the machine shop where he worked.  My sisters and I were still in bed since school was out for the year but we could hear daddy ranting about our leaving the garage door up during the night.  Mother assured him we had not because she had checked it just before she went to bed and it was closed.  This went on for several mornings even though all of us checked the door before turning in.  After several irate calls from my father, Sears made house calls to check out the opener only to declare it good as new - yet each morning the door was opened.  Perhaps, Sears announced, one of our neighbors had purchased the same kind of opener and it had somehow latched on to ours too.  None of the neighbors had automatic openers.  More irate calls to Sears, perhaps someone was playing a trick on us and was driving by at night, pointing their opener at the garage and viola, open door in the morning. 

We had just about decided we were going to have to buy a new opener, when we started to find the door open in the middle of the day too.  More irate calls, more house calls, more good as new diagnosis, same irate father.

My older sister, the one who never does anything wrong, decided one day she would climb up into the attic and wait to see who was doing this dastardly deed.  Up, and sometimes down, went the door.  Nobody there.  Up, down, nobody around anywhere.  More irate calls.  More promises to check into it. 

We were certain by this point that Sears thought they were dealing with an entire family of certified nuts who didn't have a clue as to how to operate these modern conveniences.  In fact they admitted such to us - eventually.

A few weeks after these strange events began Sears came back.  The repairman could barely contain his laughter when he told us that he had seen everything that he thought he could possibly see in his job - until now.  After much research Sears determined that the circuits of the Russian spaceship Sputnik had somehow linked to our garage door.  In the middle of the United States, in the middle of Ohio, in the middle of the smallest town in the entire world, Russia was linked to our family.

It did not take us long to get a new garage door opener. 





No comments:

Post a Comment