Memories of Times Gone By

About four years ago, I wandered towards the smoker's patio, the Old School smoker's patio, in front of the commons like the Lord intended. There were a couple of people sitting in a group, gazing catlike at the glass doors to the commons. Pretty soon, someone walked along the front of the coffee shop towards the commons entrance. The watchers' attention sharpened. As the guy put his hand on the pushbar, one of the watchers yelled "HI!" with focused energy. The walker's head jerked back towards the noise, his hand failed to engage the bar, and he crashed shoulder-first into the door. They exchanged muffled cheers while he slunk away, and settled back to wait for the next victim; another watcher was at bat now. Whether by experiment or accident, at some point they'd pinpointed the exact moment when a hail from behind would pretty much inevitably cause someone to fuck up that most basic of skills, the door-opening process. And now they'd made it into a sport.

As I watched them watch the door, two feelings divided my soul: on the one hand, these were blatantly awful people, and they were being awful whilst treating people like bowling pins. Because they thought they were so great. But on the other hand, why hadn't I invented this game, dammit?

Ok, thinking back, I think fuming jealousy really had the upper hand in my soul. Alas.