Opening Doors

Apparently, the way I open car doors confuses my friend. 

"What are you thinking when you open the car door?"

"Huh? What?"

"You always pause for a moment before you open the door, like you're thinking something, I don't know..."

"Oh... okay... and what do you think I'm thinking?"

"I dunno... like maybe, is this guy a gentleman and will he open the door for me, or something like that... I'm just curious. You're always thinking something."

"Heh heh heh heh heh... dude, I don't need guys to open doors for me..."

What is it with guys and opening doors for girls? More than that, what is it about girls opening doors for themselves or for guys that upsets everyone?

Really, opening a door is not a huge task, anyone can do it. I don't understand why this 'chivalry' factor is so special. Sure, it's a thing coming from old times, and women are thought to be the more 'delicate' sex, and so must be treated very nicely and politely all the time. It may have made sense in those times, if the doors were too heavy or something, but that argument just does not work today. 

The history of how this situation comes about is long and complex, and certainly no afternoon read. But it's fascination to observe how it operates. If a third party looks at a guy opening a door for a girl, the unconscious thought triggered is, oh isn't he being a perfect gentleman. If the girl opens the door and the guy just walks through like nothing special happened, the idea generated is, what a jerk! he's allowing a girl to open the door for him! This has actually happened to me. I've gotten those "Oh, poor girl, what a jerk she's with" kind of stares a couple of times.

Guys have opened doors for me before now, for no other reason than that they are guys and I'm a girl. I've opened doors for guys, only to have them look at me awkwardly and then proceed through the door, or try to take the door from me and let me enter first. I've never myself seen a case where a girl opens a door and a guy goes through without thinking anything more or less than that the girl is just being nice.

It's just plain polite manners to open the door for someone else. I'll accept an argument that younger people should open the door for the elderly, or that it makes sense to open the door for someone senior, like your parents or your boss. It's polite when guys open doors for girls. It's equally polite when girls open doors for guys. There shouldn't be anything weird or awkward or extraordinary about that, for either guys or girls. 'Chivalry' isn't something special; it's just this subset of nice behaviour, and shouldn't be considered anything more than that.

I won't bother to talk about picking up bags right now.

Break A Leg

Everyone should break a bone exactly once in their lifetime. Preferably in your teens or early twenties, so that you are old enough to think philosophically about it, and yet young enough that it heals at a decent rate. I have had my share of accidents and so on, but the worst I've suffered is a muscle pull, which I managed about two weeks back, on a hiking trip.

In such cases, one should also preserve for posterity the way by which one came upon one's injury, embarrassing though it may be. After all, you'll only do this once in a lifetime. How did mine happen? I and a friend were on this nice hike through a rather tricky trail, which effectively went up a hillside covered with rocks and foliage. On the return, we had to take the same tricky path, and going downhill on a steep slope is damned tricky, especially with shoes that are as ill-treated as mine are. I slipped off a rock that we were supposed to jump, hardly four feet in height perhaps, and landed hard on my left side. I didn't break any bones, but I did scrape my knee, bruise my hip and pull my elbow.

In the immediate aftermath of the fall, I thought I had gotten off pretty lightly. The real pains began the next day. I thought I'd have a mild bruise on my knee; it turned out to be a pretty bad flesh wound (the kind you get when you skid a bike on a sandy road somewhere in India). I thought the elbow was just a muscle ache; it turned out to be a pretty bad tear, and I was unable to do anything at all with the entire arm. I had a dull ache in my hip, but only yesterday did I notice the bruise, which is completely below the skin, and covers fully two square inches. I've been limping around for the better part of two weeks, as expected.

What I did not expect was how freaking difficult it is to get through life with something as simple as a torn elbow and a scraped knee. Apart from the limping, I mean. I could do nothing with my left arm for a couple of days. I couldn't lift anything, I couldn't lean on it, I couldn't flex or twist it in all those intricate ways required for simple tasks like turning the doorknob, opening the fridge, or wearing my backpack. And all the while, my knee was no better: it kept stinging all the while, whether I stood or sat, it pulled against my jeans whenever I walked, and it showed just no signs of healing. No amount of medication or ointments did anything to ameliorate the situation for a week. After four days, I didn't bother with any of it, except to use a spray bandage to cover the wound, and I progressed at pretty much the same rate. I may have slowed down repair in the first week by allowing my knee to get wet when I bathed. (The first rule of healing is clean the wound and let it dry up, and don't let it get wet. How could I have disobeyed that rule?)

It was hellishly irritating. Even in my sleep, I'd wake up frequently, because while tossing and turning in my sleep, I'd inadvertently roll into a position of pain, and my body would scream bloody murder. Things did improve slowly, on a continuum. I can't quite point out exactly when what improvement came about, but of course it did, as it was supposed to, and the past two days have been good. I can walk comfortably now, I don't need the spray bandage, and the wound doesn't sting. My elbow hurts if I twist it into specific positions, but I can at least pick up the milk carton (though not my laptop), amongst other things.

I've never actually given any thought to what people with various disabilities must go through. You can read as many books and watch as many videos about different people with various kinds of handicaps and what they must face, about how they must struggle so hard to regain even the briefest semblance to a 'normal' life. I feel a new kind of respect now, one that arises from being aware of what a fellow human being must go through. I feel a little humbled, given that all these small things that I can take for granted in my full health, are not small matters for so many people. Yet they live, they work, and they are happy. It's a really humbling realization.

I shall probably heal fully within another week or so. And I shall be careful not to push my luck any further regarding my health and physical well-being. I've been having dreams from which I wake up and can remember no more than the word osteoporosis, and always then my mother's stern warnings regarding milk and calcium come back to me. Ain't a pretty feeling.

Random Conversation: Your Hair Looks Good

Me: "Hey dude... I like the hair, looks good."

Girl: "See? See? I told you."

Boy: "Thank you, thank you."

Girl: "Much better than that junglee look with all of it floating around his neck..."

Me: "Hey no, that was good too..."

Boy: "See? I have support!" 

Girl: "One supporter... yeah sure, go be happy."

Me: "No, come on, that look was adorable too..."

Boy: (Stunned) "Adorable? I don't wanna be adorable...! I wanna be handsome, you know... sexy... stunning..."

Me: "But you..." (Pause)

Girl: "What? What? Say it fully...!" (Giggles)

Me: "See, you can change your look, and handsome is fine... But you are adorable, and that ain't gonna change. So, live with it!" 

Boy: (Speechless)

Girl: (Giggles some more)

Me: (Grin)