Our door bell never rings
on Sunday afternoon, except it did, yesterday. There stood Susan and Norma,
neighbors in the Sherwood Green condo subdivision.
“Do you know the woman who
lives in the unit that backs up to yours?” they asked.
Well, no, because no one
knows her. She lives in IL and comes over once or twice a month to see her
grandchildren who live here. She bought the unit beside ours just for those
occasional appearances. We have encountered her only a couple of times in the
four years we’ve “lived” beside each other. We were friendly and welcoming, and
she was pleasant, but she didn’t volunteer her name or contact information.
“She’s gone away and left
her garage door up,” Susan said. “No telling when she’ll be back. We can’t
leave it that way. We tried taking turns going in and pushing the “close”
button by the kitchen door and then running out as fast as possible, before the
door came down, but at the end we had to jump to get over that electronic beam
that makes the door go back up, and the door was coming down, and we couldn’t
jump high enough.”
I asked them to do it
again. I’ve never gotten to put a video on YouTube, and I figured a movie of
little old ladies in house slippers, dashing through an unknown neighbor’s
garage like a bat out of Shady Rest, and trying to leap out beyond the door at
the end, would certainly go viral. Unfortunately, they declined. [Norma’s house
slippers were mismatched, even, but when you’re 89 you don’t worry about such
things. Besides, she claimed she has another pair just like them at home.]
I figured I could try the
garage run, but I am tall, and slow, and tend to fall over when moving, or
standing, so Helen thought that was not a good idea.
We needed someone short
and fast who could jump. We could think of no one in the 118 units of Sherwood
Green who fit that description. I thought about Simone Biles but was afraid she
might be too full of Christmas candy.
It was Sunday afternoon.
We figured the condo office would know how to contact our mystery neighbor, but
the office wasn’t open, of course, so Susan started calling and texting the
realtor managers.
There was a number pad at
the side of the door, but none of us had any idea what her code would be.
The four of us together
have 337 years [actual count] of living experience, but we couldn’t figure out
how to close a garage door.
Then I thought of William
of Ockham [1287-1347]. Actually, I thought of Glenn Santner, but he looks a lot
like Bill. When I pick up Glenn to go to Crumble Bakery for coffee with the
other Crumble Bums [Tony, Charlie, and Ron], he closes his garage door with one
button, not a whole code.
So, I pushed the Enter
button at the bottom of the number pad. There went the door, right down, no
running or jumping necessary.
Susan did all her phoning
and texting again to say, as Rosanne Roseannadanna used to put it, “Never
mind.”
And as “Old Bill” Ockham
liked to say, “The simplest solution is probably the right solution.”
John Robert McFarland
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