open sesame

You approach the doorway. It is a public thoroughfare for walkers, the entrance to a department store in an age when no one knows exactly what a department store is or should be. Nevertheless, you walk through the portal. Actually, you intend to walk through the entranceway (or exitway, if you are proceeding out of the building), and to do so, you must first open the door, since you cannot proceed through the glass as if by osmosis or by sci-fi, special-effects walkthrough. But wait. Someone is ahead of you, pioneering their way into the building. The person in front of you breezily opens the door. You are a few steps behind the person, maybe a step or a half step in back of the person who just opened the door. You expect the forerunner to hold the door ajar for a moment so that you can hold the door open for yourself. You anticipate a mumbled "thank you" from your own lips and perhaps, though not likely, a "you're welcome" from the other. "You're welcome" is a dying phrase, even more so than "thanks" or "thank you." But the door is not held open, so those are moot points. The person in front of you, the one who countered your blithe expectations by not holding the door open, proceeds briskly into the store, the door left ajar, left to do what it must: close in your face unless you and your hand intervene. They don't look back. You wonder: did they know that you were a mere step or two in their pedestrian wake? Couldn't they hear your footsteps? Didn't they see your reflection in the glass of the door? Didn't they catch a whiff of your expensive, recently purchased fragrance? Should you have cleared your throat or coughed to alert them to your presence? This line of conjecture riles you. You tell yourself you are blaming yourself for another's rudeness. You are making an excuse for someone's incivility. True, you argue, you can't conclusively discern nor prove the motives of the person who walked before you and failed to hold the door open. You fully admit that the other person may not have even been aware of your presence in the aftermath of their footsteps. But that does not let them off the hook so easily. Were they unaware of you as a result of self-absorption? Or were they unaware of you because they were in a hurry, a mad dash, under a deadline or in need of a restroom? Possible, though not likely based on their speed of walking and the expression on their face as you caught a glimpse of it, a side glance, as the person turned, pivoted, after opening the door and letting it close by itself. You even generously allow the notion that the person who was in front of you was lost in a reverie, a dream of sorts. You consider the chance that a loved one was gravely ill or had just passed away; maybe a pet had shuffled off its mortal furry coil. You say this to yourself, but, no, you don't really believe it, not for a second. Who knows, you imagine, maybe the Recalcitrant Door Person (RDP) was mentally rehashing, or preparing, an argument with a friend, foe, spouse, lover, politician, driver, colleague, boss, subordinate, or stranger. But you doubt this as well because the person was not gesticulating nor were their lips moving in silent rehearsal or silent reenactment, a phenomenon you used to witness when you worked in Manhattan, as employees de-stressed on the sidewalk as they walked to Grand Central or the Port Authority. You resign yourself to the fact that you will never know the answers to these questions, not unless you see that person as you walk through the store, or as you exit, fearing a repetition of dour doorness. Besides, you doubt you would raise the issue with the stranger, even if you were certain it was the same person. Where and how would you begin? "They say that when one door closes another one opens up." If you were to utter that platitude, could you do it without irony at best and sarcasm at worst? And then what, you imagine, as you walk toward the exit on your way out the door. 

The Facebook Ex-Spouse Friending Dilemma (FESFD)

As anyone who uses (plays, performs, applies, traverses, browses, becomes addicted to) Facebook (also known as FB) knows, Facebook likes to play matchmaker. FB is fond of suggesting possible matches worthy of the august term Friend. I am using the initial cap F because we're not just talking friends, we're talking Friends, referring to the proper noun reserved for FB's own brand of kinship, closeness, or "I just accept Friend requests because I want to assemble a large stable of Friends to prove I'm both hip and popular."

Lately FB keeps suggesting I Friend (the English major in me wants to say befriend, or perhaps beFriend) my former spouse. After all, FB tells me, we have 26 Friends in common. (And 23 of those are our offspring! Those were busy years. HAHAHAHAHA!) I am not sure what to do. It does not keep me awake nights. But I'm just wondering. Plus, I wanted to blog about SOMETHING.

This Facebook Ex-Spouse Friending Dilemma (FESFD) poses some delicate challenges of protocol and etiquette, at least for some former spouses.

• Who makes the first move? In other words, who does the Friend requesting?
• Why?
• Is it wise?
• How do current spouses or partners feel about this?
• How do offspring (more warmly known as children or kids) feel about this?
• What if Former Spouse A (FSA) requests that Former Spouse B (FSB) be a Friend and the request gets ignored or is rejected?
• And is such "ignoral" or "rejection" neither an ignoring nor a rejection, but merely an act of prudence?
• Does aforesaid Friending invite FSA and FSB into realms of discourse and quotidian detail better left unshared?
• Has someone already blogged about this? (Probably).
• Is it important?
• Or trivial?
• Is Facebook important?
• Or is Facebook trivial?
• Or should the question be more Boolean?

The Portals of Peccadillo

Want to know what peccadillo pisses off Pawlie? Solipsistic Portal Syndrome. Picture this. You're in a grocery store, one that does not have automatic doors, or at the entrance to some sleek corporate HQ, or on the way to divorce court, or at the DMV, or the ER, or to a job interview, et cetera ad nauseam. Pick one. Some fat-ass or Twiggy-ass or pear-shaped ass or Ordinary Mortal advances before you. He or she opens the glass panel. He or she opens the door and keeps walking, solipsistically not bothering to acknowledge your human form or its fragrance or stain or aura or perhaps even its mysterious repulsive force field. No. Oh no. Solipsistic Portal Syndrome, or SPS, only admits the self through the doors of life. Said person opens the door, advances, lets said door close, and keeps walking, even though you, dear reader, may be millimeters to the rear of this ogre.

I have sometimes sarcastically said, "Thanks" to such narcissists. (By the way, did you know sarcasm means "flesh-cutting"? Deservedly, in this case.)

I want to shriek at these ingrates, "Can't you pause, turn around, and hold open the feckin door, you feckin feckhead?!"

But I don't.

It's not just the idea of opening a door. Of course, I can open the door on my own. It's the smug solipsistic sarcastic self-absorbed savage lack of courtesy of such twats.

I wonder if Ralphie encounters aspects of this.

And don't get me started on Littering and the End of Civilization.

(There, I feel better already. Incidentally, can anyone give me a better word than "peccadillo"? This, to me, is a quasi-major offense, not a trifling one.)