OK. Imagine your best friend and you are both 8 years old. You race each other home to your house after school to find your dad finishing the installation of a state-of-the-art garage door opener. This thing is slick… Push a button it goes up, push the button before it gets to the top and it stops, push the button again and it goes back down. Emergency release tether (which you are to short to reach), REMOTE CONTROL!!! (Our VCR still had a cable to the remote) and best of all… This is the real amazing part… if it hits something when it is going down, it senses it, and goes back up!!! Child Proof!!!
Holly smokes this is cool!!! The questions race through your head… so, you fire questions at your dad faster than you can think of them…
Q) What if it hits you? A) It goes back up
Q) What if it hits a dog? A) It goes back up
Q) What if it hits your hand? A) It goes back up
Q) What if it hits a worm? A) It will probably squish it
Q) What if you drive into it? A) Stay away from my car…
At this point, Dad has a headache, makes sure he has his car keys and family dog and goes inside leaving you with your friend and a child proof, state-of-the-art garage door. What do you do next? Well, here’s what I did…
Push the button, it goes down…cool but boring. Push the button again and it goes back up, still, cool but boring… Lets take this baby for a little test drive… Push the button and stick your foot under it… Sure enough, goes down, pushes on it pretty hard but goes back up, very little pain. Of course your friend wants to try it too, works for him. Now the confidence level is coming up. Well, finally, I lay down under it and tell my buddy to push the button. Door goes down, pushes pretty hard on my chest, some pain, but goes back up. “My Turn”, he says.
Well, as the door went down I got an idea. The door went down and pushed on his chest, and just as it started to go back up, I pushed the button. This caused the door to stop, pinning my friend under it. I danced around a little, throwing things at him and poking him in the head. Fun stuff, things fond childhood memories are made of. He told me he would get me for this, bla bla bla. So finally I decided to let him up.
I had the best intensions to let him free, but this is where things went horribly wrong. Because the door had just started to head up when I pushed the button, the next direction of travel was back down. This was unbeknownst to me, so I pushed the button. Grrrrrrrrrrr, went the little electric motor as it struggled to complete its journey downward (See, the brilliant engineers who designed this Child Proof, state-of-the-art garage door made one mistake, it wasn’t idiot proof!!!) We figured out the hard way that the door needs to travel some distance before if can sense an object and change direction. Because it was already pushing on his chest, it couldn’t tell the difference. Well, I don’t know if you have ever seen how flexible the chest bones of an 8 year old are, but I did, and let me tell you, it is scary!!! My friend is trying to yell but has no air in his lungs, I’m in a panic because I was grounded for a week when I was late for dinner (I could only imagine what the punishment for killing a neighborhood kid would be) and his chest is doing its best impression of a pancake. I tried to jump up and grab the emergency release tether (No wonder I never played basketball) to no avail. Finally, after what seemed like and eternity, the door started going ding ding ding as the chain started skipping over the drive wheel, the whole engine started rattling and banging and the door finally sensed a well squished, yet barely alive young boy under it. It was music to my ears as the door finally changed direction and released my poor friend.
Well, he was pretty sore and had the wind knocked out of him so he was in no mood to fight (Lucky for me). But what he said when he finally was finally able to speak I will never forget… “OK, Your turn…” I might have fallen off the turnip truck, but it wasn’t yesterday. I politely declined his invitation and asked him not to tell my parents. He agreed because he was to scared of what our parents would do if they found out how stupid we were. So, he went home, probably with severe internal injuries and I thought how lucky I was that he didn’t think of it first, cuz, man, that could have been me!!!
So what is the moral of the story, Save InnPoints!!! What have they ever done to you?