All garages have definite personalities, and I don’t think it’s tied to how many cars they can hold. Some are very focused, others are prissy, and a lot of them simply don’t know how to behave. Ours falls into the last category, which makes it extremely unpleasant to be around. It is also bursting its seams because it has an insatiable appetite for "junk." It can’t seem to get enough and I suspect it has figured a way to collect even more when we’re out of town.
Simply stated, our garage has an attitude. There are times I’m afraid to walk in there because, if it’s in a bad mood, it’s likely to lob something my way. Usually I can’t tell where it came from or what it is, until it bounces onto a heap of nearby rubble. Occasionally the missile so old it’s hard to figure out what it’s made of.
Even when the garage is comfortable temperature-wise, it still likes to pull mean pranks. It’s been known to hide things and refuse to reveal their whereabouts. Spoiled garages do that, I guess. They probably think it’s funny.
Once, our garage hid a can of WD-40. It wasn’t where I knew I left it, and my husband swore he hadn’t touched it. Then, after we made a special trip to the hardware store, it suddenly appeared on the shelf, in plain view. I thought it was a pretty dirty trick, but there wasn’t much I could do because I had already used the new can. So then we had two, which pleased our glutton of a garage immensely.
Sometimes, at night, I can hear sniggering coming from that direction. It’s disguised as a water heater gurgle, but I’m not fooled. I know a laugh when I hear one, and I also know when it’s aimed at me. I’d swear it’s at that exact moment that things are being moved around until they are stacked and teetering precariously, just primed for someone to come through the door.
Opening the door triggers an invisible trip-line, and we get bombarded with anything from paper cups to bottles of carpet cleaner. I’ve been conked on the head by an old office machine, stubbed my toe on a useless length of metal, and been the target of flurries of paper from boxes that pop open on a command that is inaudible to the human ear.
Our garage is wild. It’s totally disheveled and it won’t tidy up. In fact, it acts like a barn. I know many garages aren’t like ours – some have been well trained and are appropriately disciplined. Ours, on the other hand, has never been made to behave, so we are constantly subjected to its aggressive misconduct.
I’m not sure we can do much about it, either, because every time we try to restore order, we get sabotaged. If we clear a space, it gets filled in when no one is looking. Boxes shift around to occupy empty areas, creating a landing pad for every loose item in the house. Then, like the Sierra Nevadas, the mountains refuse to budge, forcing us to hike around it as best we can.
We’ve tried lots of things, including giving "time outs" by closing the door and ignoring the garage altogether, but that doesn’t do any good. It is impervious to discipline. I suppose, at some point, we’re going to have to restrict its intake of junk. I hate the idea, and I absolutely dread doing such a thing, but I think we’ll also have to take away some of its toys and perhaps even haul some of them to the dump.
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