Automatic Glass Gates

If you were around (would be so nice!), you’d sit with me in the Kamp’s Bakery and Coffee Shop sipping cappuccino, having a Broetchen with cheese, egg, and cucumber and (much less thrilling) would watch me reading my jottings on creation and Barth’s ethics that I will be questioned about in an oral exam tomorrow. Surely, your gaze would wander to the nice Christmas tree and the shops outside. Maybe you’d make plans for Christmas gifts, interrupted only by a stream of cold air that wafts around your ankles about every 20 seconds as the automatic glass doors open to welcome or to release customers – the latter with great reluctance.
For reasons of their own or none at all, but certainly entirely out of your control, the doors refuse to open hampering the passage to the merry life around the Christmas tree. Striding toward the door with full confidence, people either make it through or have to stagger to a halt, all confidence gone and, depending on personality, replaced by anger, devastation, amusement, or utter helplessness. After half a second of orientation, a small man started to jump up and down and to wave his hands in front of the photo sensor. After a while, the doors opened. Then a small group of senior citizens came to the door. As it refused to open, wives shot reproachful looks at their husbands, who glanced desperately at the saleswomen behind the counter. Those shouted impatiently (no doubt, they were sick and tired of witnessing those heart-wrenching moments of human failure and lack of control) to move about. As the doors thus challenged opened, the wives hurried out with annoyance expressed in every step, while their husbands greeted the ladies at the counter with  something amounting to bashful companionship. Then a few people left without problem and someone else was rescued by a passer-bye outside, who inadvertently happened to trigger the mechanism. The most successful strategy, however, seems to have been found by a woman, who really seemed at a loss of what to do, and decided to not further try, but to trust technology more than her ingenuity and to simply walk back two and a half steps and to approach the door once more, but this time in a straight line. And … voila.
Well, I need to get to Prof. Thiel’s lecture on Second Isaiah and will have to face the door very soon. Just finishing my cappuccino. The problem now, of course, is that now I am self-conscious about performing intelligently and gracefully. After all, I will have to report to you. Under those conditions disaster lurks inevitably – one has two feet: one to step, the other to trip. Why don’t they have doors with handles? Barth would probably tell me that there may some analogy to be found … of course, there always is (or not?). Still, handles are a great invention, too, and if just for bakeries. O.k., will get back to you to tell how I made it.

… The doors opened right away…Hurray!!!

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