The Great Door Knob Incident of 2019

Sometimes it seems as if the world is divided into two types of people and generally speaking you fall into one camp or the another. Take for instance the subject of housing. There are those who rent and those who own their homes. At first, I was a renter, a happy-go-lucky type who called the mystical magical “super” whenever anything went wrong. Ah yes, those were the days (the “good ole days” as they say.) Once you purchase and go the ownership route, oh my how things change. After you buy a house you find yourself doing things you might never have imagined yourself doing. It’s a wild, wild world you live in now, let me be the first to tell you, if you haven’t figured that out on your lonesome. 

Picture it. The other day I was working from home. It was a nice day. The sun was shining, the birds chirping, Chase was even being quiet…ah, the joy of it all. Life was good. (I should have known …this is usually a sign that the bowels of Hell are about to open up yet again but, heck, what can I say? I’m an eternal optimist to a fault.) I decided to open the back door to, I don’t know, maybe it was to let the dog outside. Heck, I forgot what I was even doing that set this chain of events off, but I was doing something that started with me opening the back door or trying to and that’s when it happened. The back door knob you see would not turn. When I say, “would not turn,” I mean it actually would not budge. It was as if somebody glued it in place and it was just not going anywhere. I’ve seen garden slugs more mobile, let me assure you. Nope, this thing was not turning, not one bit.

Now, not to toot my own horn, but I’m a little bit, shall we say, generally speaking “handy” about these things. OK, I’ll confess. I’m no stranger to power tools. So, being the power woman that I think I’m all cracked up to be, I decided I was going to take this task on myself because, well, because I wanted to go back into the yard again someday and, frankly speaking, who else was going to do it? I grabbed the tool box and, to quote the great philosopher Shawn Colvin, decided it was time for, “a few small repairs.” How was I supposed to know it would end up this way? Ah yes, the joys of home ownership rear their ugly head yet again.

It started when I took the door knob off because, well, there were screws attached and, surely I thought this had to be where one starts when one wants to take something apart and fix it, yes? No. No. Not just no, but, “HELL NO, DON’T TOUCH THIS.” (Seriously, if you ever, and I do mean ever, think it’s a good idea to unscrew your door knob, just think of MC Hammer and go all, “you can’t touch this!” on it. Trust me. You’ll be happier, OK maybe just more sane, in the end.) I unscrewed the door knob and figured out (rightly so, I found out later. Um…much later but rightly so nevertheless) that the knob itself was attached to this thing and that thing was attached to this little thing and that thing was attached to this other thing that goes “chuk chuk” when you turn it and that little “chuk chuk” turnie thing was, in fact, broken. (Did you get all that? Good.) My first thought here was, “no problemo!” I can just run down to Home Depot and get a replacement. Great idea, right?

Um. Couple of problems here. For starters, I had taken the door knob off completely. It was on the floor (not a good look for a door knob if you ask me but, heck, there it was!) and then there was the other little problem of the “chuk chuk” thingie. I could not unscrew that out of the door easily. Because I could not unscrew it, and I didn’t know what it was called, even if I had made it down to Home Depot, what was I supposed to do when I got down there? How was I supposed to ask for this thing? 

“Hi, Um, you don’t know me, and I’m not usually this stupid but, you see, my door knob wouldn’t turn. It sort of broke so I unscrewed it but then I could not get it back on or get it off again or…well, let’s just say it’s home on the floor now…but, wait…you see…it was once attached to this thing and that thing was attached to this other little thing and that other little thing was attached to this other thing that goes “chuk chuk” when you turn it and that little “chuk chuk” thing? Yeah, that’s the part that I need. You have one of *those* right? Because, like I need one of those. Oh, and I need it in a hurry because, well, the back door isn’t shut right now and as we speak somebody is probably breaking into my house because the door knob is on the floor. If I don’t hurry home, it might just mate with the door mat and then what would I have? Some kind of mutant ninja Franken-backporch going on and, why, the thought of *that* just scares me, OK?” 

Yes, I’m sure I’d get lots of help after that one, right?

The door knob was on the floor. The back door was open. I tried to just screw the door knob back onto the door and I could not make that happen. It just wouldn’t go. Even if I got close to screwing it in, the pieces didn’t quite fit and I could tell the little “chuk chuk” thing was still broken. Oh the humanity! What I would not give for a mythical magical “super” at this point. I had inadvertently created the great door knob incident of 2019. I was never going to live this one down. LeSigh.

I broke down and decided I needed a professional. I called a locksmith. He asked me a couple of questions and told me he could come over that evening after six. Of course, as you can imagine, he fixed the door knob in what amounted to all of about fifteen minutes of work. The little “chuk chuk” thing? Yes, it was the part that was broken. Yes, I needed a new one. Yes, I was right about the entire thing. It even has a name. It’s called a….wait for it….a latch. (Now you know.)

The locksmith wasn’t too expensive and was actually pretty nice. He put some oil on a few other doors while he was here and fixed the “latch” on the other door as well (to keep it from…well…you know.) In the end, everything worked out OK although, in hindsight, I probably should have called the locksmith in the first place. I even told him, I had to confess, “Yeah, I tried to repair it myself and then the knob would not go back on, would not come off, just wound up sort of stuck where it is.” Thankfully, it’s no longer on the floor. I guess you can chalk this one up to experience. There you have it. Carol: sometimes good with mechanical things, always good with Bourbon.

It’s working now no thanks to me and the great door knob incident of 2019 has now turned into something we shall never speak of again. Well, maybe by “never” I mean actually as soon as you stop laughing at me. You are going to stop laughing at me sometime soon, aren’t you? (Eh, you must be a renter. Lucky slob. Enjoy it while you can, believe me, enjoy it while you can.)

Until next time…