LITERALLY …

From our good friend, John in MO – we’re all glad he & his friends & family are all with us un-injured …

“This past Saturday, my wife’s parents were in town while I was at work during our annual Mall Sale.  We met up at Kmart for the 4th installment of the Cars Collector Event.  Afterwards, I headed home with the kids, while my wife and her parents kept shopping.  We pulled into the garage and went into the house, closing the big garage door when we got inside.

I checked Take5 and decided to go out to the van and bring in the Cars I had purchased.  I opened the big garage door to gain access to the back of the van, stacked several full and empty Collectors cases on the garage floor by the freezer and headed inside, again closing the big garage door.  I sat down by the computer and within 30 seconds heard a very loud and very weird noise, followed quickly by a loud bang.  I called up to the kids to see if they were OK.  They were fine, but didn’t know what the noise was either.  I opened the front door, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

I went down to the garage, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary there either, but when I looked by the freezer, I saw that a small empty Collectors case had fallen off the top of the stacked boxes I had just put there.  I thought it was weird that an empty box would make all the noise that I heard; when I picked it up I realized it was full of Cars, but not from Saturday’s event at Kmart.  I put it back on the shelf where I determined it came from, and saw 3 bigger boxes full of Cars pushed out 4 or 5 inches toward the freezer.  At this point, I was really like “what the heck”, and walked over to the van.  It looked fine, and nothing else seemed out of place.

It was then that I noticed a 2-inch flexible hose sticking out of yet another Cars box that was behind those 3 bigger boxes.  I stared at it and couldn’t figure out where it came from.  Why did it shoot out of that box?  Was it from the A/C line on the ceiling?  Then I realized that it was not a flexible hose, but a metal spring!  I looked up at the garage door rail and did not see the spring.  It had shot into the box!

HOLY COW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It turns out the hook at the end of the spring rusted, and when the garage door opened that last time, it was like pulling an arrow on a bow, and snap!!!  The thing shot from the rail and into that box.  Thank God no one was in the garage, and thank God the boxes full of Cars were all stacked up where they were, because had they not, the spring would have nailed the furnace — or at least the large duct that carries air up through the house.  Oh, and just behind that is the gas pipe!

I called our local neighborhood garage door company and left a message about what happened.  I also called my wife and told her to NOT use the garage when she got home.  Then I snapped the photos below.  Once they were all home, I went back to work where I told this story about three dozen times.  We were still shaken up about it on Sunday, and couldn’t believe how many times we had all been in the garage the last few days — even her father was down there bringing a hutch for the living room.

The garage door company came out first thing Monday morning and replaced all the springs and added safety cables within each one.  I just hope they do their job!”

So, remember kids, here’s the takeaway lessons from this tale …

a) If someone offers you the option of safety cables, say YES. Unless it’s a dessert topping option, always say YES to safety cable.

b) Always rush upstairs to read TakeFiveADay – it can save you from a giant spring shooting towards your head … unless you read TakeFiveADay at a work location where you fire springy ordinances, then never mind.

c) CARS can stop metal traveling at 888 miles per hour – and can help you save expensive home repairs or giant springs sprunging towards your propane & oily rag collection.* So buy many CARS – it can stop metal projectiles, high floods, radiation and malware.**

Glad to hear everyone is okay and just a little box damage … maybe if you lined the garage door opener with three perpendicular rolls of 3-packs, no more worries …

CARS – Is there anything you can’t do?

* Embellishment – John, your story turned dull towards the end 🙂

** I’m pretty sure it’s legal to say that.