Saturday, March 24, 2007

Warning to All Who Enter Here


As some of you may know, I'm a bit of a germ freak and there isn't much logic to my fear of contamination. One thing that bothers me the most is touching things on the bus. Stranger still is the fact that I get more weirded out if I touch the bus with my hands (which I wash a lot) than with my fabulous Heather-made mittens (which I never wash and jam into my purse with my gum, cell phone, lunch).

I'm also uncomfortable touching door handles, especially ones in really busy areas or bathrooms. And that brings to my next fear...the crazy revolving door at my practicum. My entrance to the building has three doors. Two ordinary doors possessing germ-town handles on either side of an insanely fast revolving door. I used to love revolving doors as a kid. They made me happy because they conjure up memories of every cheesy movie/episode of "Perfect Strangers" where someone goes around and around in the door, delighting in its endless turning.

But this revolving door is more sinister and self-aware than any of those happy TV-land doors. It lies motionless until it learns of your presence from the sensor attached to it's door frame. Once is senses you and smells your fear from about 3 feet away, the door kicks into high gear. It starts furiously slapping its partitions in the air, warning you to stay away and take your chances on the disease-riddled door handles beside it. But my fear of pooh particles is much greater than my fear of being mercilessly dragged around by a revolving door. So I watch the door as it spins around and I time my steps as I approach, running at just the right pace so that the door can't catch my face or arms between its partition and frame. Once I'm in the door's domain, my heart races and I run furious little steps to avoid being smacked around by the door as it races to catch up with me. And then I speed out of door as soon as there's a space big enough to fit my body through. Victorious and breathless, I pump my fists in the air and skip away.

One morning, I was in the middle of the door, running my tiny fast steps when it almost got me. Instead of speeding up to crush me, it decided to stop moving all together. The jig was up. I should have risked getting hand-herpes from the other doors. I stood there at a loss as to what to do until someone on the the outside took pity on me and tripped the sensor, foiling the evil door. When I got home that evening, I told Kyle about what happened and he asked, "Why didn't you just push on the door and make it turn?"

Strangely, I didn't even think of that. That's the secret of the evil revolving door. It steals your mind...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I seriously can't stop laughing! Not that I'm laughing at you at all, I just really like the way you tell stories...and I love that you start by being afraid of germs and then they turn into pooh particles and finally, hand herpes! Maybe you should just open the doors at your practicum with the mittens and then shove the hand herpes into your purse because then you'd have nothing to worry about!

Karen said...

When I was going to Mount Royal there was a revolving door that wasn't so crazy. Funny thing is, I also have a story about it.
Evie and I were not really being to bright and decided to go through at the same time. Everybody does it. So the two of us and our backbacks and our jackets in hand went through the revolving door. Not everything came out though. Evies jacket got stuck and just kept on revolving, somehow we weren't sure what to do. It seemed a lot funnier at the time as well. We laughed about it for days, so there must have been something a little funnier that what I just explained.

Karen said...

My other thought on revolving doors involves the energy efficiency. A revolving door regulates the heat in a building, making it much more efficient on heating. Therefore, good for the environment. See they maybe aren't so evil.

Heather M. said...

Ugh, I totally HATE touching door handles, grocery cart handles, etc and seriously the bus almost makes me sick when I have to ride it. I don't even want to breathe when I'm on there. I have seriously considered walking around with latex gloves on so I don't have to touch anything. And the minute I get home, the first thing I always do is wash my hands. Blech!

 
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