Petty World: The Side Door

I have this place I go when something really small on the outside is a super big deal on the inside.  If you deny that you go to Petty World every now and then, you're a liar 'cause we all do it.  I just got back from Petty World, and boy am I angry.  This time I went there via the side door that gets sucked open on extremely windy days.  On the inside of the door is our garage.  On the other side of that door is a brand new $6,000.00 American Standard air conditioner and the clothes line.

When we got the air conditioner back the end of December 2010.  (I told you it was new)  I made a huge deal about watching the side door did not get blown open in the wind and bang up against the new air conditioner.  I told my husband and my son that I knew where the door handle would hit and I would be keeping an eye on it and the first person to let the door go was in huge amounts of trouble.  I suggested a stopper anchored in the concrete or at least a buffer for it.  Because, and here it is:

"I Never Get Anything New or Nice and I'd Like It To Stay That Way for at Least a Little While."

Well, not much more than two months later, we've been having weeks of terrible wind.  Wind that would make even the Wizard proud.  I opened the door to the garage from the house and noticed sunlight cascading into an otherwise shadowing garage.  The side door was open.  I marched out and examined the side of the air conditioner.  Sure enough.  There it was.  Right where the handle of the door meets the air conditioner.  A meaty scratch and a dent.  No, they are not huge.  The point is, I know they are there and it wasn't me that put them there.

Now I sit in my computer chair up to my laptop seething because I know who it was that let the door go.  It was my husband.  He's been in and out all day washing clothes.  (Don't even try to add here, "At least he was washing clothes.")  I solidly announced that the wind had sucked the side door open.  I didn't scream, didn't whine, didn't slam any doors.  Just plain and simple.

"The wind sucked the side door open." 

I let the words drift down the hall to where he was watching the sport of the day on TV.  Nothing.  No comment from the TV room and I know he heard me because I've had a conversation with him using my inside voice from exactly where I stood.  A vision of me taking a bat to the air conditioner flashed in my mind that surprised me.  In my mind I totally destroyed it to a heap of unrecognizable metal.  It felt good to be the one to destroy something new, something nice, something I'd waited over five years for.  It felt good to be the doer and not the discoverer.  Yes, I am the one that took a bat to our brand new air conditioner and I like it.

Petty World is like that.