The Garage Door Saga

By now everyone knows what Sarah did to her garage door. While this sort of thing happens all across the U.S. I'm sure, it's not all that common any more I'm sure. Why? Mostly because hardly anyone seems to even have a garage any more. There are so many apartment dwellers that it's made having garage parking almost nonexistent--Especially to a 17-year old.

But now her garage isn't a garage any more--It's a carport.

For those readers that may have not gotten the emailed pictures, here's one of them that will give you a good idea (click for larger):


Sarah has been stretching herself a bit thin lately. Teresa said she's got practically a failing grade in math this week, and up until now it's been her best subject. It's not easy math she's into--She's in the realm of pre-calculus and still it's been a good subject for her. This time it's a matter of not understanding the newest offerings that they're studying is the story I got. Because it's always been her best subject, she is understandably frustrated. Now, take that frustration and throw a little tennis into the mix. Tennis tryouts were last week and although she was somewhat sick during them, she did make the varsity team. Now it's time for the nightly practices. Some evenings she stays after practice is over and has more one-on-one coaching as well. That's a pretty good workload to maintain. Now add to that the fact that someone saw her boyfriend driving her car in the parking lot. Sarah swears she didn't know he was going to do that. She asked him to go to her car and get something from it, and when she found out what he did (and was caught by someone else) she was pretty upset. That was the night before the garage door.

Now it's yesterday morning and she and Teresa are running all around the house trying to find her keys, making her almost late for school and frustrated as well. (If you could see their house you'd know why they always lose them.) Apparently, Teresa opened the center garage door where she keeps her car instead of the door that Sarah's car actually uses. It's a pretty common thing. Well, Sarah gets in her car, and because her mind wasn't on the task at hand, just saw that the garage was lit by daylight and assumed it was her door like it usually is. She then put it in reverse and backed up.

I guess she went running and crying into the house. Teresa said she was lying on the floor crying and saying, "I just can't do anything right!" I have no idea what transpired between her and Teresa or how much hollering went on, but Teresa went out and pulled her car back forward. That was not the best course of action. I'm sure half of the damage to her car came from that. From what I could see, the car had door damage right up to the rear window. Most of it is scrapes that didn't quite go through the paint, but there is paint missing in a spot or two. There is also a small hole in the giant plastic "tail light looking thing" that spans the whole rear of the trunk, as well as her radio antenna was broken off cleanly.

I dreaded the worst when Teresa sent me a text yesterday morning and gave me the gist of what happened. When I got home and had a beer, curiosity got the better of me and I grabbed my camera and went over. I must say, I was amused. I would have rather had a picture of the car actually protruding from the door, but apparently I was the only one that even thought about taking any pictures. After I shot the few pics that I emailed out, I went home and grabbed my cordless drill with a socket in it and came back. Taking the door panels off was a quick job, taking only about 5 or 10 minutes. I just finished when Teresa called and I gave her the updates.

They don't have much of value in that garage. The only thing I would worry about would be the 10-foot fiberglass ladder (pretty expensive) that stands in there, and maybe Sarah's bicycle (that I doubt has even been used in the last 5 years). Given that, I doubt the door will be replaced any time soon. Here's a shot of the far left garage stall. It's the one that I used to park in when I lived there. See what it's become? (again, click for larger)


The bad part is that there isn't a single bit of anything that's worth spit in that whole pile. As a matter-of-fact, I doubt if she even knows what is even in the pile. Notice the green tarp in front of where Teresa parks her car? More junk. In this picture you can see that junk has infiltrated Sarah's parking area as well:


I called last night and talked to Sarah for a few minutes. I wasn't mad at her or anything--I just wanted to see how she was doing. The conversation started out like this:
"You had a pretty bad day today didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"How are you doing now?"
"Okay. I won one of my tennis matches at least."
And so it went. After we talked tennis for a while I went back to the car. She didn't even know that she had torn off her radio antenna until I told her that she wouldn't have any radio any more. I also told her that maybe she could cut some kind of a deal with her uncle Denis and he could buff out some of those scrapes on it. The rest of the conversation was spent with me telling her how important looking is when you're backing up. How it could have easily been a person walking, someone's car--Anything could have been back there. The point was that she didn't look first.

Sometimes life's lessons can be a little harsh. This time she was lucky.