balding angrily

I spent today in a wheelchair; my company sponsored my time, giving money to a local charity. I’ll post the name of the charity when I can find it. The event is designed to make architects aware of the specific challenges of the wheelchair-bound.

I knew it was going to be difficult, in general terms. Therefore, I’ll focus on a specific.

When did we become so lazy and/or absent-minded that we need a device to close a door for us? I can think of only one place where a door closer is appropriate - at a door that closes in the event of a fire.

You might say, “But Alex, what about at shop entrances? Isn’t that a matter of security? Aren’t automatically closing and locking doors appropriate there?”

No. No they’re not. If we have become so averse to turning around to close the door behind us, we deserve to have our shit stolen. If we have trained generations of people that the door will close itself, then it is our own damn fault. If our national security is at risk because someone forgot to close the damn door, we were never really secure.

You might say, “But Alex, what about doors into bathrooms? Surely, we need to protect the public from seeing dirty bathrooms and/or male body parts.”

No. No we don’t. Again, if you can’t turn around to close a door, you deserve to have your wang looked upon. And again, if, as a society, we have become so lazy that we’re not training people to close doors, we deserve an unwelcome peepshow.

Swinging doors are cloves of garlic to a person in a wheelchair - if a person in a wheelchair is a vampire. Door closers are prickly spines on that garlic - if garlic had prickly spines. Do this. Pick up one of those hand-held counters popular with amusement park line attendants. Carry it around with you one day and click it every time you go through a swinging door. Click it twice if the door has a closer. Fuck it; forget the counter. Just count how many times you have to open a swinging door in a day.

Imagine the number you get is the amount of times you spilled hot coffee on yourself. You would be justifiably afraid of coffee. But you can’t give up coffee, and you can’t NOT spill coffee on yourself. In order to function, every day is a constant barrage of messing your shirt and burning your nipples.

By the end of the day, I feared doors. I feared leaving my cubicle to go to the bathroom. I feared my daily [walk] to Starbuck’s. I feared going to the kitchenette to get a glass of water. I preferred gas pains and a screaming bladder to negotiating the path to the bathroom. I preferred the dull boredom of my computer screen to turning around in my cramped cubicle to look out the window.

But don’t let me discourage you from doing a similar exercise, especially for charity. I’ll do it again next year if only to remind myself how the smallest things can be huge for someone else.