When You’re not the Norm by Konnie Enos

We have a cat.

Because we have a cat we have a litter box.

We also have dogs and if you know anything about dogs, you know they will chew poop, especially cat poop. For this reason we have to keep the dogs away from the litter box.

The litter box is in the bathroom.

There is only one way into or out of this bathroom. A door we have developed the habit of leaving all but closed except when in use. None of the dogs can open it from this tiny crack, but Tiger, the cat, can.

Now generally speaking Tiger only opens the door far enough to squeeze through himself, he is a cat. The problems arose when it became quite clear this wider opening was sufficient for all the dogs to “nose” it further open.

It was also abundantly clear Tiger wasn’t about to learn how to actually close the door.

New solution: Child safety gate in the door frame.

Now on the surface this seems like a wonderful fix.

The cat can easily jump the gate whenever he wants while none of our dogs are big enough to push the gate over on their own, nor can they jump over it. (Thankfully they haven’t tried their combined weight on it.)

Since this is a “child safety gate” and all the humans in our house are adults, or might as well be (less than six months to go for the youngest), it was readily assumed the gate wouldn’t deter any of us.

After it was installed I sat in my usual place on my bed, where I have a view of the bathroom door and watched.

My husband steps right over.

My daughter, who is the same height as my husband makes it look as graceful as dancing somehow.

Both my sons who are taller than their dad have no issue.

My other daughter then approached the bathroom.

I warned her about the presence of the gate stating, “You’ll probably have to move it out of your way.”

She looked at it. “It’s okay.” Then, with some care, stepped over it.

I swear my jaw dropped. I was stunned. She’s the closest to my height and I was positive I could not step over it.

When it was my turn to enter the bathroom, I measured myself against the gate.

The top of it came to about an inch below my belly button.

When I realized that I had a clear vision of trying to straddle our old dog Jim Boy. Considering the height, the comparison was easy to make.

So I’m the only member of the family who can’t just step over it.

Then we discovered the problem.

I could not figure out how to move it!

For at least two weeks I had to have someone else move the thing just so I could use the bathroom.

Mind you, I’m in my mid to late fifties and vaginally delivered FIVE children!

Yes, there were some close calls before I could get into our only bathroom.

Then I finally figured out how to get it down.

Whew!

But then there was the issue of putting it back up.

In my household I have told my family for decades I won’t do any chore “below my waist”. My reason for this is because way back in the spring of 1971 I broke my back. Within a couple of years arthritis started to set in. Bending over hurts.

Now guess what I would have to do to reset the gate.

You guessed it. Bend over.

Now if I could simply put the gate in place and re-latch it as quickly as I could undo it, then there would be no problems.

Yeah, it’s not simple.

It took me another half a week to finally figure out how to re-latch it but I could not get it to latch before my back was yelling at me.

So though all of this, it seemed the gate was down more than it was up. It seemed to cut down on the dog incidents but they were still happening.

Anyway, finally, one day I actually managed to get the lock set within seconds. Now it’s no problem for me.

But what I thought about while I was fighting with that gate was how any person who doesn’t conform to the average has to adapt to a world not set up for them.

If you’re taller or shorter than average you have to learn to adapt to. If you’re left handed, you learn other ways to do basic tasks.

Being a short ambidextrous person, I find myself adapting a lot.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.