Now and then, I visit a friend or a family member who chooses NOT TO have a knocker on their door, a bell I could ring, or even a security system that showed them my face on their home camera.
Nope, they won’t have any of it.
They like and respect the good old knock. I knock at the door and pray they don’t have adolescent kids playing loud heavy metal music at full volume, tailored to drown those knocks out.
Sometimes, luck is in my favor, and I do get in. Other times, I stand outside their door and call them on their mobile, announcing my royal arrival in a befitting non-royal tone.
My imagination has also taken me to a world where doors exist, but knocks don’t. So you… enter.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” comes to mind.
Well, I don’t want that done unto me. Ancient Athenians must have valued their privacy too, I suppose, for otherwise, they wouldn’t have come up with such an ingenious way to transform the world of respectful arrival announcements.
I assure you, I am not trying to be fussy here. I have tried. Tried and failed (might I add, miserably) – at the subtle art of whistling, snapping fingers, and knocking.
What I haven’t done as bad at was identifying the root cause; almost all of them have to do with expert use of fingers, or some part of it, to some degree.
So it must be my fingers.
A kid in kindergarten would probably do a snap-finger routine much better than I do.
Whistling has always evaded me AND haunted me. For some reason, I am surrounded by expert whistlers, taunting me every opportunity they get.
Knocking should come more naturally than those two, you say? Well, not to me. And I have microfractures to show them.
I have tried many styles of knocking: palm facing the door, palm facing me, fingers bent, fingers straight, but none of them generate enough sound to get the attention even of the person standing next to me, let alone the person who’s in.
It’s as if my fingers are layered with some additional silencer skin.
But there is one good thing about me; I am lazy. So, naturally, I am good at finding shortcuts.
I now have a variety of ways to do the knocking – and the means I use depend on my mood at the time, on a scale of complete frustration to fulsome zen.
The means to get the resident’s attention would range from a scream outside the door, “Hey, it’s me, open up, where the hell are you!?” to “ using the key ring to rhythmically tap on the door to a song I like, followed by a complement of some heavy bass fist bangs. I have noticed that the latter approach, i.e., the fulsome zen works better for me.
I am yet to find someone who suffers the same way I do. Misery loves company. It’s unbearable to think I am the only one with this condition. I wish to find at least one person like me one day.
It’s going to be a thing of history when that happens.
Guess what the first thing I would do when I find out where their humble abode is?
Knock knock.
Friends of Words 