Lost Journal

Humor Column
by Tim Mollen
December 14, 2006

Garage Door Damaged on Re-entry

Journal Entry:  August 10, 1986 (age 17)

As I pulled into our driveway on Cornell Avenue today, I was paying less attention than usual.  Maybe it was because I was cranking the Romantics’ “Talking in Your Sleep” on the radio.  Maybe it was because of the food coma that was setting in from consuming the Happiest Meal ever made by Ronald McDonald.  Whatever the reason, the result was that I slammed the right bumper of the car into the frame of the garage door.

“Ooh.  Not good.”  I turned off the radio, and immediately backed up to make another attempt at maneuvering the tanker into the canal.  My amused brother, Dan, emerged from the rec room into the garage just in time to see me slam the left bumper into the other side of the garage entry.  He walked over to my open driver’s side window and said, “Nice.”  He was holding out his hand and wiggling his fingers.  I let out an exaggerated, fake chuckle and glowered at him.  But I also took the keys from the ignition and handed them over as I grumpily exited the car.

This wasn’t the first time I had run the car into the side of the house.  Actually, it wasn’t the tenth time, either.  Remarkably, there wasn’t a scratch on the car.  It would take a lot more than a house to put a dent in the 1978 Chevy Impala station wagon I share with Dan.  Alas, our house is not constructed of Chevy bumpers.  Both sides of the garage door frame showed multiple dents, each one marking a botched experiment with trajectory, speed and radio volume.

After Dan successfully parked the car (somehow!), I nervously asked him, “Are Mom and Dad home?”  He replied, “No, you lucked out this time – they’re at Aunt Jane’s.”  I let out a relieved sigh.  Many recent family dinners had been unpleasantly interrupted by a violent tremor shaking the entire house, followed by Dan’s sarcastic observation, “Tim’s home.”  The folks had been understanding the first few times.  Dad gave me some remedial parking lessons, and told me that my brothers John and Bob had done the same thing to the garage at our house on West End Avenue, just as my oldest brothers Jerry and Jim had done years before at our house on Vine Street.

But I had long ago broken all the family records for vehicle-domicile contact, and was well on my way to losing my driving privileges altogether.  Since Mom and Dad weren’t here for my latest little misjudgment, though, I figured I had gotten away with it at least one more time.  But then Dan pressed the button on the garage door opener.  About halfway down, the door made a screeching sound that would wake Pete Townshend, and stopped.  It seemed this time I had managed to actually bend the tracks that guide the garage door on its descent.

I guessed that my parents would probably take the pessimistic view that the door was half open, rather than half closed.  “Don’t worry,” Dan said with a smirk, “I’ll give you rides to the workhouse they’re going to send you to.”

© 2006 Tim Mollen

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