每天读一篇英语小故事：Jimmy Fixes His Door
Jimmy lives on the second floor of a six-unit apartment building. His frontdoor has two locks -- a security deadbolt, and a regular door handle lock. The
front door also has a peephole -- a tiny piece of glass through which Jimmy can
look out his door at about eye-level to "preview" who is knocking on his door or
ringing his doorbell.
The peephole is a security device, but Jimmy never uses it. When someone
knocks, he just opens the door. First of all, he lives in a safe neighborhood,
so security is not really a problem. Second, people rarely knock on Jimmy's
door, so he is always eager to greet a visitor.
Before you can knock on the front door, you have to push the button on the
black screen door to open the screen door. The screen door has an inside lock on
it, but the lock has not worked since the screen door was installed more than
two years ago. This has bothered Jimmy from day one. Today, Jimmy finally
decided to do something about the lock on the screen door. It was a nice, warm
sunny day. Jimmy was in his shorts -- no flip-flops, no shirt.
The lock was part of the screen door pushbutton handle. The outside and
inside handles were held together with just two screws. Jimmy got a flathead
screwdriver and loosened both screws. He kept adjusting the screws, and pushing
on the outside button. Eventually he adjusted the screws enough to where the
lever stayed in the locked position when he pushed on the outside button.
Finally, he had made the right adjustment.
But now he needed to put a spacer on the inside handle to maintain that
adjustment. He found a piece of plastic that was just the right thickness. He
inserted the plastic between the handle and the doorframe itself, and then he
tightened the two screws. Bingo! It worked perfectly. He could push on the
outside button with all his might, and the lever would remain locked. Jimmy
grinned. The screen door finally worked properly!
Jimmy had fixed a two-year-old problem in less than an hour. He was
ecstatic. He returned the screwdriver to the toolbox, thinking “I'm a
genius.”
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