Its spring, and that can only mean one thing.  Time to fix the screen door.

You see, to enjoy the great outdoors, you must first get from the great indoors.  In our house there is only one way to accomplish this feat and that is through the screen door. I mean that quite literally.

You may ask why.  You may figure the answer out. I’ll give you a hint.

My wife believes that one should close the screen door, to keep out pets such as bugs, squirrels and the occasional used car salesman. This is perfectly reasonable, assuming that you are dealing with someone with the mental acuity higher than a 6-year-old.

But my wife has me, and no one has successfully proven that I meet this criterion. You know the saying from Einstein– “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Yep, that’s me. Was there any doubt?

Yes, I assume that if I leave the door open it will stay that way. Which means that my wife will close the door to keep out pests and me. You really can’t blame her.  In any case, I am not paying attention which can only end in one result.  We have to call Pablo.

Pablo seems like a nice guy. He runs a pretty good mobile screen repair service.  Yes, he has visited us before.  Pablo looks at the bent frame of my door. Then mutters “not again” to himself. My wife quietly agrees.

So, he informs me that it will cost money to fix (again) the screen door that he so carefully fixed before.  It is like a Marvel movie where the Avengers go on vacation to visit NY on vacation for their world-famous Shawarma and Nick Fury has to once again rebuild the city.  (Sidenote:  I know that they stopped having Avengers in NY for some other “universe” character. That said, whatever current Marvel superhero is in vogue still ends up in NYC because apparently the bad guys all have the same map. Either that or Marvel is too cheap to find another location to blow up. Your guess is as good as mine.)

Anyway, this time Pablo wants to inform me of my “options”.  A stronger frame – ok, he admits that would be useless.  Smoother wheels – these only work if the darned thing is on the track; so about 15 minutes before I bend the stronger frame in half.

But the best one of all is the “invisible screen”, which is designed so that you cannot tell if there is actually a screen there.  I look at him, Pablo looks at me, we both look at the charred remains of the existing door. I’m pretty sure the door groaned, begging to be put out of its misery. Then we both laugh at the sheer (get it?) futility of it all.

So, yes, no invisible screen.

So, good reader, I challenge you.  The first memorial LarryLand screen door expiration date.  Choose any date after today that you figure I’ll walk through the door again. Put it in the “comments” section.  The winner gets absolutely nothing.

Yes, it’s a Rite of Screen.