I was laying in my bed this morning shortly after having taken out my garbage and recycling. Suddenly the thought hit me that I may not have boarded up the door correctly. We don’t have locks on our doors so we use wooden posts.
You takes the post and you place it into a blocking position and that’s what keeps the door secure. Occasionally, we forget. I forget more than he does and it’s cause for a loud yelling lecture each time. The most recent of which was last night.
Once it was in my head that I might have forgotten this practice this morning, I had to get up and go downstairs and check. As state would have it, sleep was awake and outside taking out his garbage. But with impossible for me to determine at this point whether I had left it open or not. When I say open, I want to stress that the door closes like any other door. It’s just the wooden post that keeps people from coming in unexpectedly.
It is a secure door. That’s an important distinction simply to understand that yelling at me for forgetting the piece of wood for 10 minutes isn’t justified in my mind, but I dare not say that out loud. his rationale that the door could swing open at any time and the dog would get outside into the free world where it would instantly bite a bystander and he would be forced to give up his favorite pet.
This is almost a ridiculous situation, but not absolute. It is conceivable, although highly improbable that something would open the door and the dog would ignore that something, come from wherever it was within the house and escape. Highly improbable, especially given that the dog is seldom in the hallway or dining room unattended. The only area that has access to the front door that isn’t behind a second door.
In any case, that’s not the issue. That’s just me trying to justify my context that this is one of the most absurd reasons for me to be yelled at and yet it happens. Therefore, I fear it and I do my best to remember to close the door and barricade every time. It happens occasionally after a grocery or food delivery when I am distracted.
So I am left in the position of not knowing whether he is angry and will tear into a new fit when we interact today. I don’t have time to go back upstairs before he comes back into the house but I just barely make it into the kitchen and close the door so that I delay our interaction.
I go to the washroom and sit as he comes into the kitchen and goes outside to feed the animals for the morning. Just as I am about to escape the washroom and go back upstairs where potentially I could stay the entire day without seeing him again, he comes back inside. I wait a little longer but eventually I open the washroom door.
Amazing timing, that he just happened to be opening the washroom door at the exact same time and I startled the shit out of both of us. We scream briefly and then laugh at the situation. I go back upstairs and he goes back outside and we don’t discuss anything more, as we are still reacting to being startled in such a humorous way.
So now I sit in my bed not knowing whether I have avoided the anger because the door was closed correctly, or the timing of the spontaneous bathroom incident,. Both of us have the tendency to forget things at least in the short term. I may have avoided an angry disciplinary lecture, But it is equally possible that it will just come a little later when something reminds him of it.
It’s equally possible that I did close the door and just lost the memory of such a mundane task. However, I can’t be certain so I lay in bed the rest of the day with that potential tension. It sucks.
Nothing came of it, but I figured out a new foolproof solution that will assure I don’t do it again. I put the post in my way so when I come indoors, I can’t get back inside without replacing the post to barricade the door.
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