The Doors

There are many concepts out there that are hard for a human mind to comprehend. For me, one of those concepts is a door in a public bathroom that requires a handle to be pulled in order to open it.

Obviously, these doors are designed for us to physically touch that handle in order to let ourselves out. It is also obvious that whoever decided to install those types of doors by now has got to have some sort of desease caused by constantly touching the said handle every time they use a bathroom.

Why? Because, while in an ideal world all creatures would wash or at least rinse their hands after having their them in such close proximity to their not so clean nether regions, we do not live in such world. There is always that one individual that, as much as our peripheral vision lets us, we see make a bee line from a stall or a urinal directly to the door (we also usually try to look in the mirror to see if we personally know this savage so we can tell our coworkers about his/her awful hygiene habits and try to avoid any handshaking in the future).

As we see that individual grab the door handle, we realize that at that moment millions of tiny but potentially harmful and equally disgusting bacteria quickly make their way off the host onto the door. Oh, no! If only this was a "push", not "pull" door so we could kick it with our foot and escape unharmed! After we start contemplating on how to open it without having it come in contact with our exposed skin, we pull our sleeve over our hand and pull on the handle, treating it as if it was a leper in an Indian colony.

Sometimes we take a paper towel, wrap it around the handle, and then, after opening the door with it and avoiding it slamming on our hand or head, aim for the garbage can, sometimes with a success of a blind man at a target practice. On occassion, though, we pry the door open with our pinky finger, thinking that this nasty bacteria will only roam in that designated location instead of our entire hand, thus making it safe to eat a doughnut as long is it does not come in contact with that contaminated body part.

Sometimes an elbow or a foot may also come in handy, as long as the handle is low enough and we dont embarass ourselves by falling onto the floor while performing this acrobatic stint. Also, a workman's comp package does not cover injuries brought on by getting your foot stuck in a door handle and smashing your face on the floor. All these troubles would be eliminated if only we could push the door with our shoulder or any other body part. In other words, bathroom door handles are the enemies we avoid and despise, and so are the inconsiderate morons that installed them.