All day (every day but Monday and Thursday) I sit in a mostly-empty house in my neighborhood. It’s a spec home, one of only two new-construction houses left to sell in here. I sit here with my computer and a book or two, just hoping a buyer will stroll through the door.
My desk (which is actually a hall table that doesn’t so much have clearance for my legs to rest underneath) sits right in front of the dining room window, giving me a direct view of the house across the street. The people who live there are nice. I’ve talked to them on multiple occasions, and yet… they baffle me. 
They open and close their garage doors probably thirty times during every one of my six-hour shifts, and (rational or not) it drives me crazy.
They open the garage door, they back a car out, they go back inside the house, they come back out, put the car back in the garage, and close the door. Ten minutes later, they open the garage door, the husband walks around the side of the house and looks at something I can’t see from where I sit (sideways) at my table, and then he goes back inside and closes the garage door. (I’ve never once looked at the side of my house… is this something I should be doing multiple times a day?)
Maybe fifteen minutes pass, and then they’ll back the other car out of the garage—but only halfway. A position that (if I tried it) would, I’M SURE result in a damaged car AND a damaged garage door because I’d forget I parked my car in that ridiculous position and press the button to lower the door.
I might hear some rummaging coming from inside the garage and then they’ll pull the car back inside and close the door.
My sister told me a few weeks ago about her brother-in-law who will sometimes leave his push-button mini-van doors open overnight because he thinks things like that (buttons and motors) surely have a finite number of uses, and he doesn’t want to waste them unnecessarily. I laughed when my sister told me that, and then I realized that I have very similar assumptions/fears.
Our garage doors, the starter on our cars, the motor that puts my convertible top up and down, our pool lights—all things that I assume to have a certain number of uses—and I don’t want to be frivolous in how I spend them. That’s why, if, say, I’m taking the trash out to the street, I’ll open the little garage door (the one we don’t park behind) to give the big door a break and spread the wear-and-tear around a bit.
The husband/wife across the street can’t possibly have those fears. Garage door up, start a car, turn a car off, garage door down, garage door up, start a car, turn off a car. Garage door down. Repeat.
When I was in grade school, I acted in a short play where this family was trying to leave home to go on a vacation.
It was just four wooden chairs positioned (sideways) on the stage and a pile of (empty) suitcases sitting behind our chairs approximating the trunk of a car. The dad was in the drivers’ seat and he asks, “Is everyone ready to go?”
“Wait!” says the mom. “I think I forgot something.” And she runs backstage.
She returns and “my sister” says, “I forgot to take the cat over to Mrs. Somebody’s house!” And she runs backstage.
I announce that I forgot my Tiddlywinks game. And then I run backstage. (Or maybe “my sister” forgot her Tiddlywinks and I forgot the cat…. It doesn’t really matter for the sake of this story.)
This continued until we were all finally ready to “go” – which meant the dad put his hands up in the air and pretended to steer the car— and then someone else announces they forgot something else and the curtain falls.
That is what I picture happening with these people across the street. Only they’re not in their car, forgetting things, they’re in their house constantly remembering new reasons to run back outside…
And here they are again—burning up yet another garage-door open.
Tara Winfield / Writer, Reader, Realtor / 4851 Tamiami Trail N. / Suite 258 / Naples, FL 34103