We have five college degrees between the two of us.  But, if a garbage disposal, ice-maker, window shade, or doorknob goes awry, we are way out on a limb.

This week it was the doorknob on the door going out to the garage.  It would not open the damned door. This put us in a bind.  Our car was in the garage, and with it, it’s opener.  There is a keypad and we forgot the code.  I could not find the front door key, but what the hell use was that?  It just lets us out of the condo.   We have a door-wall for that.

We have a gazillion tools, in the garage.

So, we had to improvise with a table knife and one gigantic screwdriver.  We tried popping the door open with the big screwdriver.  “Stop, STOP!” I shouted.  “We are wrecking the door!” I used that method in high school when I was locked out.  It wrecks the door.

We then approached the problem with a table knife.  These are handy for most screw situations.  Unwinding the screws on our side of the door allowed the screws to fly inexplicably under the washer.  It was then time to get down and dirty with the door knob.  In an hour we managed to wrestle and mutilate the door knob so that it fell off on our side with a “Kachung!” sound.

But the door knob inside of the garage was still on.  I didn’t have the power, but my husband found something heavy, working in tandem with the giant screwdriver and hit the other doorknob in the garage with enormous force.  It worked!  The doorknob flew into the hinterland of the garage.  What was left was a circle of a hole in the door where the doorknob used to be.  That’s okay by me.  For some reason, though, my husband put the pieces we had of this disaster into a Ziploc bag.

Now we will have to call a real live repairman, which is what we should have done in the first place.