Keep walking...

I like to pretend I’m cool. However, the truth being I’m far from it. I get the feeling that someone is always watching you and hence the need to appear classy cool all the time is a must have. Of all the things that demolish my coolness quotient; walking through a sliding door would be Numero Uno.

I’m talking about those state of the art (ok so they’ve been around for quite some time now) infra red type sliding door thingies…the ones that slide open automatically as u approach them when u visit Walmart or Publix or for that matter any and every other commercial establishment.

I never had a problem with them...till one fine day the damn thing didn’t slide and I went ‘THUMP”…excruciatingly embarrassing moment that. I realized later that I was trying to enter through an exit.

Its pretty complicated…u have like a dozen of doors to choose from and the proportion of their distribution doesn’t exactly follow a universal pattern. Plus I have to go real close to read the sign which would tell me if it’s an “entrance” or an “exit”.

On my quest for being cool, approaching a sliding door cautiously is not an option…it all has to happen in a flow…I mean come on…can u imagine Tom Cruise taking a pause at the sliding door to figure out why in God’s name is it not sliding open…Hell No!!! U just have to keep walking and hopefully things will happen…that’s my policy…keep walking…u might go ‘THUMP”…but always remember that such insignificant hurdles are a part of life. So every time I go “THUMP” I just get right up and try the next door…I don’t loose my cool…coz the way I have it figured is, what are the chances of the same person seeing you walk right into the glass door twice? …Negligible.

I’m what they call a shrewd calculating mean machine…I always know what I’m getting involved with…so I lost a couple of million dollars on match fixing…big deal!!! It wasn’t even my fault in the first place...nobody told me that bribing 5 yr old kids to throw away the inter-kindergarten cricket tournament was against the law…Stupid technicalities.

Anyway, since the chances of the paparazzi capturing you while you consign a face imprint on a sliding door are pretty slim, you need to relax…I got it covered.You have nothing to worry…which is what I had assured the guy who sat behind me during my 10th grade chemistry exam when he asked me how much time did we have for the exam to get over…I think I might have told him thirteen minutes and he heard thirty minutes...bad karma I guess.

So like I said if I’m alone I don’t care….but if I’m with someone…WHOA...then a lot is at stake. But I’ve developed a plan of action for that too. I continue to have a conversation with my partner as we approach the ‘sliding door’ and at the last moment take a step back pretending to have just dropped a coin or something…which basically means my partner is the one who’s going to go through the door first…if he goes through without an incident I follow through…and if he happen to go “THUMP” I point at him and make sure everyone around takes notice…yup…what a bunch of loosers… they can’t even walk in through a door…..HA!!!...Bloody Amateurs!!!


The operations manual for girls is even more refined and time tested …everyone’s so gaga over chivalry and everything else associated with the prehistoric crusade movie genre, right? Everyone loves a well behaved chivalrous guy….so what does a gentleman as myself resort to?....nothing much…I walk up to the door and stop…and then I motion for the lady to step in front coz a lady should always lead right?.....yup…works pretty fine. And if my chivalrous gesture is followed by a “THUMP” …hehehe…back to pointing and laughing. U must think I’m such a mean person…I take pride in it, Thank You.