Click! Another Alexia essay.

Henry was away on a business trip. So many of my “adventures” start like that. It was Friday night and I decided to go out for dinner. That meant I would go, order something, and bring it home to eat. I had the most delicious hamburger ever in the bag beside me in the car when I turned into our private drive and operated the clicker to open the gate. I pressed the button in the car and nothing happened. I tried it again and again. Then I tried the clicker hanging on my pocketbook. Still nothing happened. I was getting worried by now. Very worried. Muffy was in the house and I did not like to leave her alone for a long time and my sandwich was getting cold. I turned off the car and rushed to the gate box. There is a general code for opening the gate without a clicker. I tried it. Nothing happened. Now panic was beginning to close in. And I was angry. I was looking forward to my now warm sandwich. I tried the general code again, but my anger caused me to hit the keys with more vehemence than the first time, It worked!!! Yeah! I rushed into the garage and then went to enjoy my sandwich sharing the meat with Muffy.

Saturday morning I went out to get the morning newspaper. I clicked again to open the gate and again nothing happened. The gate just sat there, closed. Oh no, I thought. The news paper lay close enough to the gate that if I stretched I was able to reach down and get it. And get it I did. After all I really enjoy reading it while I eat breakfast. When Henry called and I told him what was going on, he thought that maybe the telephone bill that operated the gate had not been paid. Could be a possible cause of the problem I thought. During the day I looked outside occasionally and I soon noticed that cars had driven in. If they had managed to drive in, then the bill had to have been paid. For the last year or so our landline telephone has been giving us problems. At times Victoria and my friend Gayle have not been able to phone us They called us and our telephone did not ring. Only later did we learn they had tried to reach us by Alexander Graham Bell’s invention. At this point I tried an experiment, I took the receiver off the hook and then went outside and tried the clicker. Unbelievably it worked. I rushed back into the house to get the key to our mailbox and then emailed Henry the good news.

Sunday came and out I went again to get this time the Sunday paper. I clicked once again and oh no, it did not work again. I went back into the house to take the receiver off the hook again and this time that “trick” did not work. I was disgusted and I still wanted my newspaper. This time the paper was much too far away for me to reach. I stood there and thought. Then I thought of the tool we had for getting leaves out of our swimming pool. That had a long poll before you got to the basket part. Back into the house I went and located the tool. I fitted it through the gate and stretched as far as my short arm could go. Just a little too short. The brain was still working and I thought of the tool we used to get fruit off of a high branch of a tree. I thought this tool might be long enough to reach the compilation of much of the news of the day. Out I went again. I was right, the tool was long enough to make contact with the paper. Repeatedly I touched the plastic bag covered newsprint with the plastic top of this tool and managed to drag the paper a little closer to the gate each time. It worked, but this was not the way to live.

I was tired of being stuck at home. I wanted to have some fun. Just like Saturday, I repeatedly tried the clicker and failed each time until 1 PM. Then all of a sudden the gate opened. I took advantage of this and rushed to get Muffy and her coach and out we went for a walk. As of right now (5:43 in the afternoon) the clicker is still working. But who knows about tomorrow.