Dog versus Door
Jennifer Flaten

A few weeks ago, okay it was really fifteen weeks ago, but in my world, fifteen is a few. The dog, in a pre-walk frenzy, crashed into the screen door. Please note a rickety pre-war screen door is no match for a small fur covered bulldozer. The dog has a score of 1, the door has 0.

After wrestling the dog, who sensed an opportunity to rampage unencumbered by humans through the neighborhood and wasn‘t going down without a fight, back inside, I looked at the door. At first I thought she merely popped the door free of its latch, upon closer inspection I realized she’d hit the door so hard that the doorknob flew off.

We’ve had no doorknob on the front door ever since. I bet you are thinking that perhaps we are one of those commuter families who exit and enter their house via the garage and don’t see the front of their house. I wish. We actually use the front door all the time, not only to take the dog out, too many times a day to count, but we also go out that way for school.

We don’t let the lack of doorknob stop us, oh no. We simple wedge our fingers into the decorative trim around the window and give the door a good yank. Voila, door opens. We go in and out of that door so damn much I am just counting down the minutes until that decorative trim pops off the door.

What is that the sound of banjos you hear playing? Yes, yes it is. The only way we could get any more hillbilly, is if we moved the couch onto the front porch; oh wait, it doesn’t fit.

It’s not as if we didn’t try to fix it, we did. Apparently, our door is an odd size. Of course it is, let’s face it “odd size” pretty much sums up my life, probably going to put that on my tombstone.

Anyway, back to the door, it is 2 3/8 inches thick. Guess what? First, when I first went to buy the new doorknob/latch I didn’t know I needed to have the door width. After running home measuring the door and returning to the store, I discovered you could find a wide variety of door knob/latch kits in every size, but 2 3/8.

They don’t make doors that thick anymore or so said the man at the hardware store. How could my hardware store let me down? I love the hardware store’ that‘s right I love the hardware store, what‘s it to ya?. We even went to some of the bigger home improvement stores. All we found there were sympathetic glances and many head shaking. 

I can always get what I need at the hardware store-until now. I don’t know if I will ever recover from such a betrayal.  Uh, I’ll probably recover by next weekend; they are having a sale on gardening supplies.

Luckily, God or Al Gore created the Internet. On the internet, once I stopped reading celebrity gossip and looking at funny cat pictures I found a place that carries exactly what I need-for the door. Now, it is simply a matter of ordering it and installing it. Whoo-hooo, this requires power tools. Probably have to go to the hardware store to get a drill.