Paul was ecstatic. He had just met a beautiful woman at the library that morning, and already she wanted to come over to his place for dinner. Paul was sure he'd get lucky tonight. He had just picked the girl up at her house, and they walked together up the porch steps to his front door. She couldn't help but notice the door was a pleasant shade of spring green.
The girl was curious when Paul reached into his coat pocket and extracted a ring that was positively full of keys. And most of them looked like house keys. She also noticed that all the ones that looked like house keys were each a different color. Paul unlocked the door with a green key, and opened it, and behind it was another door, this one the color of fresh curry powder. Paul then reached for a yellow key.
The beautiful woman looked around her, at the neighborhood they were in. It was an awfully pleasant place, she thought, and certainly didn't look like a high-crime area. Still, she thought, maybe Paul was just a little overly cautious. No harm there.
Paul then opened the yellow door, and behind it was a third door, this one the color of a rosy red apple. And he produced a red key. At this point, the woman asked Paul what was going on. Paul turned around, blushing slightly, and explained.
"I have one door for each of my 7 ex-wives. When they left, I just didn't have the heart to change the locks. So I put a new door outside the one they had a key to. They also each seemed more upset than the last one, for some strange reason, so I justify the extra doors to myself as added protection in case one comes back for revenge. No worries! I'll have us inside in a jiffy!""
Paul turned back around and opened the red door. By the time he got inside and turned back around, the beautiful woman was long gone.-- 21 Quest, Oct 07 2009 [+]-- kaz, Oct 07 2009 - not somebody you would want to break up with. Why not simply add additional deadbolts?-- WcW, Oct 07 2009 It lacks the same symbology. Besides, there's something distinctly more whimsical about an extra door than just adding an extra lock.-- 21 Quest, Oct 07 2009 Paul should have been so taken with his date that he forgot to lock all seven doors of sentiment.-- wjt, Oct 07 2009 Paul is nothing if not practical.-- 21 Quest, Oct 07 2009 Paul is screwed if all his ex's get together.-- FlyingToaster, Oct 08 2009 [+]
Albiet only two doors, I would need them to be reinforced and edged in razor wire.-- MikeD, Oct 08 2009 When dealing with an ex that doesn't return his/her key, simply replace the entire entryway and have the old one shipped to their new digs:
'You didn't win, but thanks for playing"-- FlyingToaster, Oct 08 2009 My ex flew back to Florida, more than 3000 miles away, so I didn't think I needed to change the locks. About 3 months later, the bitch mailed her key to a friend in Spokane, and the girl came by while I was at work and took all the disputed property we were fighting over, then shipped it to my ex. She even left a note! My house was burglarized, and the police did absolutely nothing. They said it was up to me to find out the girl's address, then call the crime reporting desk when I had that information. An extra door would've prevented that!-- 21 Quest, Oct 08 2009 Or an angry dog.-- xenzag, Oct 08 2009 I had two dogs, one of them with security training. Problem was, they'd met her before so they thought she was OK to let in. Anybody else would've been torn to shreds.-- 21 Quest, Oct 08 2009 You need dogs that dislike women, perhaps? anyways, when you gonna learn that when you say something of what you said is funny, or whimsical or whatever for whatever reason, then it immediately loses the intended flavor. Just saying... don't waste your breath on people who can't be bothered to waste their thoughts.
Finally, is this an invention? Or is it a 'lets all' put new doors up when we get a divorce. See... you've actually posted it in a 'let's all' fashion. To avoid this, you need to turn it into a service, or a product, that's all.. "This is an idea for a service that shows up and mounts a new door/small hallway in front of the old door..." "This is an idea for a modular door/hallway unit that fits over an old one for the sole purpose of symbology and whimsy..." yada yada neutral-- daseva, Oct 08 2009 Most women are afraid of snakes, mice and spiders AND half worn out string vests with heavily stained areas.-- xenzag, Oct 08 2009 The invention is a a modular hallway designed in a staggered fashion such that each inner door's hinges are mounted 4 inches to the left of the the door immediately outside it. This allows all the doors to open in the same direction without touching. When you walk in, with all the doors open, it looks like a straight tunnel that slants to the left, like a parallelogram.-- 21 Quest, Oct 08 2009 I would like this story better if the stand-in for the readers were described as something real, rather than an abstract "beautiful woman"; and I need a better excuse for locking all those doors than that each was more upset than the last.
Before I got to that explanation, I thought the story was set in a society where divorcees are settled with such extra entrances simply by custom, as a visible sign of their past mistakes, and increasingly dire warnings to future partners.
[This is a surreal kind of invention that we have lots of on the site, and that I have no inclinations to administratively get in the way of. It's not a ``let's all.'']-- jutta, Oct 08 2009 Damn, no kidding I still have trouble understanding 'let's all'. I always thought it was for ideas where the poster wants some action to be performed by people, but no invention is necessarily made. Like the 'world wave' ideas.. kinda wish we had an mfd for this type of thing. Just read the help file on it, haven't been there in a while. My apologies to the poster.-- daseva, Oct 08 2009 'Sokay. I didn't understand your let's all claim though, because nowhere did I say everyone has to do it for it to make a point.-- 21 Quest, Oct 08 2009 gonna be a bit of a pain carrying wife #8 over the threshhold... hmm... haw, trying to pull a fast one eh? this won't work unless you have one set of doors for ingress and another door(s) for egress.-- FlyingToaster, Oct 08 2009 She grows up fast. She's a girl in the first two paragraphs, then suddenly a beautiful woman by paragraph three. How long did it take to get hold of that yellow key? Then I have this creepy feeling that 'long gone' means she'd died of old age by the last paragraph.-- pertinax, Oct 09 2009 It's a lot cheaper to simply change the locks. I replaced front and rear locksets and deadbolts for under $50.-- whlanteigne, Jan 11 2013 Well obviously, this isn't about cost.-- 21 Quest, Jan 11 2013 Or function. Or practicality. Or aesthetics.-- WcW, Jan 11 2013 Aesthetics? The doors can be whatever shape, color, size, and material the homeowner wants. From either the inside or outside, you only see one door unless you have windows in the doors. As far as function goes, it makes a mean security system. As far as practicality, who cares? This is the HB man!-- 21 Quest, Jan 11 2013 random, halfbakery