The House with Blue Doors

Ben walked home from school along Oak Street almost every day, but he had never paid much attention to the white house on the corner. One afternoon, he noticed something unusual: the house had two bright blue doors. One was a normal front door. The other was wider, even though there was no garage beside it.

Ben stopped to take a closer look. The wide door had old scratches near the bottom, as if heavy objects had been pushed through it. He wondered whether the house had once been two separate homes. While he was standing there, Mrs Stone came out to water the plants next door.

“Do you know why that house has two doors?” Ben asked. Mrs Stone had lived on the street for more than thirty years, and she seemed pleased to be asked. She explained that the building used to be a bicycle repair shop. Customers brought their bicycles through the wide door, while the owner used the smaller door to reach the rooms where his family lived.

“The shop closed a long time ago,” she said. “But the family liked the blue paint, so they kept both doors.” She even remembered the sound of the repair tools on Saturday mornings.

On his way home, Ben looked at the other buildings more carefully. A window above the bakery had an old sign, and one wall showed the outline of a doorway that no longer existed. He realised that his familiar street still had stories he hadn't heard.