Tonight I was just a little bit too fast for the doors at Harris Teeter. I confidently approached the automatic doors on my way out, self-righteously carrying my baby spinach and bananas without the environmentally-uncouth convenience of a plastic bag. I was naively expecting the doors to oh, I don’t know, DO THEIR JOB. My nose was practically touching the "Automatic Doors Keep Moving" sign(hilarious joke you tired-ass doors) before they wheezed open and my momentum almost made me fall over onto the candy machines.
And this wasn’t the first time this has happened…this week. Monday night I stopped by Target to browse their pen section (I think it might be a teacher thing, but the pen aisle in any store is my happy place) and I ended up buying a fresh pack of multi-colored Precise V-7s. Everybody knows that the V-5s have simply too fine of a tip and they do not allow you to express yourself boldly enough, so it has to be the V-7s…anyway, I bought some new pens and a giant box of Nerds. On my way out, the automatic doors couldn’t keep up with me, and I found myself tottering on the brink of losing my balance. I dropped my Nerds and discovered that they are by far the noisiest 60 calories per serving candy on the planet.
My question is am I getting faster or are the automatic doors getting slower? I know for a fact that I walk with purpose; I walk like I’m on a mission because usually I am. Especially in places like Target, a grocery store, or a mall. I am annoyed by how spread out everything is. If I go to Target and I need to buy rubber mats for my car and a new pair of socks, I have to walk a quarter mile. In the grocery store, I usually hit up the produce section and then head on over to dairy. By the time I get back to my car in the worst-designed parking lot ever, I’ve walked about a half mile. I speed walk to try and reconcile some sense of convenience to my errands. Automatic doors are not conducive to my convenience which is ironic because they were designed to be convenient.
But it is possible that these automatic doors are slowing down. Maybe they are getting old and the motors are sluggish. Maybe they are symbolic of our idle economy. Maybe they are some ruse to try and slow us down like a tangible modern day Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem. “The tide rises, the tide falls…” The doors open, the doors close.
Or maybe, just maybe I am truly that twitchy and spastic. But even if I do walk with purpose, I know I’m not the fastest walker out there. Tall people walk faster than me so I’m guessing they’ve had this problem too, and since I know I’m not alone, I would like to petition for faster moving automatic doors. The automatic doors for people who don’t have children that need to be leashed. The automatic doors for people who don’t have a torn ACL. The automatic doors for people who don’t have swagger.
But then I realize that this is pretty low on my "Be The Change You Wish To See" list.
I guess in the meantime I should cool my jets, slow my roll. Or go ahead and just pay my deductible.
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