While talking to my daughter last week, she made the comment that I could talk to a doorknob. Her remark hung out there for a long second while I sorted out some details about her inheritance, but then finally concluded that her opinion was worth some scrutiny.
On the playing field of life, doorknobs rank rather low in my book, falling somewhere between drywall and doormats, but certainly no higher than caulk. While it is true that we could not get by (the door) without them, no one ever said their doorknob was the first thing they’d if they had to escape a burning building. Now that I think of it though, moving quickly towards a doorknob in that scenario might not be a bad idea.
Still, I think the doorknob remark of my daughter’s was reaching a bit.
In the Blunder household, I counted some fourteen doorknobs altogether, including the ones on the front and back of each door, with each one having a slightly different patina of fingerprints and residue of hand sanitizer but there is no known evidence, audio or otherwise, that would suggest I have had a conversation with any of them. We do have one pocket door I talk to a lot because it wasn’t installed correctly from the get-go and doesn’t lock very well. I’ve tried to chit-chat with the door latch – mostly conservative comments given that it is an election year – nothing offensive in these uncertain times, in the hopes I can become the change I want to see in the world, but apparently my skill of conversing with doorknobs doesn’t extend to latches in pocket doors.
And even though I’m entering my golden years, I believe I’ve still got time to change my daughter’s image of me, rather than the current one of me sitting on a stool, face to face with a doorknob jabbering away a mile a minute. I want my core family to have some good things to say about me when I leave. I want them to be able to sprinkle the earth with my wise sayings and repeat the stories about my charitable giving and bravery.
“Yes, he was an amazing man,” I imagine my family saying, “he once battled a school of piranhas singlehandedly while towing a raft loaded with children up the Amazon. We don’t know how he found the strength, but we think that he had a special gift from God. To be able to grip the rope with his teeth and swim that raft…well…it’s nothing short of amazing. Oh, and also, he could talk to a doorknob. I mean, if there was a doorknob anywhere nearby, Jeff was talking to it.”
Hand-colored etching by Jeff Bender
I’m just not sure how I feel about that kind of legacy. At the time, when the doorknob comment fell out of my daughter’s mouth like a brick, it was kind of a conversation stopper, a revolutionary way of getting my attention. And it worked. I thought for a brief second it might be a compliment about my friendliness, but there was no context for it at the time it was said. Boom, there it was. My daughter simply floated it out there while we were talking about healthy foods to eat, so I’m not quite sure how doorknobs and my socialness ended up together in the same conversation. Normally, when the subject of doorknobs comes up, it is not because of health foods, but because someone has locked themselves in a gas station bathroom and can’t get out without screaming. Even then, the subject of doorknobs is rarely brought up by the medics who are giving mouth to mouth or applying those electric fibrillation pads.
By the way, there were any number of foods brought up in that conversation – beets for example – which I have a very tenuous relationship with. I did not know they can turn your urine red, so that at one point in my life many years ago I had a lot of tests done at considerable expense only to find out that my worries were unfounded. This is probably too much information, but I tell it to show how difficult it is to mix doorknobs into the subject of health foods, no matter how talented a conversationalist I might be.
In fact when I think of the subject of doorknobs and how many there are in the world, whether they have been installed correctly, how well they contribute to the Feng shui of a surrounding area, how history has picoted on their existence, I can’t imagine ever, EVER, bringing one up with any health food, specifically the ones we were discussing, namely seaweed, edamame salads, and turmeric.
Doorknobs fall, I realize now, under the general category of mostly nothing, and are usually responsible for exchanges between people who have gone badly off-topic.
I don’t have the courage to ask my daughter what her comment meant. It could mean a lot of good things, but if it doesn’t, and she hesitates or falters when she tries to dig herself out of the ditch she has dug for herself, I’m going to feel that on some level I have failed as a parent, and that I will be remembered as the father who had many grand and glorious qualities, but who could, in the end, only be counted on to talk to doorknobs. This is what I imagine she will say when I go to meet my Maker:
“…yes, my dad was a stalwart citizen, caring and doting father. Our dearly departed, Jeff, was sensitive and kind, good with children, and generous with his family. However, he did talk to doorknobs. Yes, he did. I know it comes as quite a shock to those of you in attendance, but we felt that now is the time to reveal his secret life, a life of wanton disregard, wholesale ignorance and communication failures. By the way, Kleenex are being passed around right now – No, not those, that stuff is seaweed, which you are welcome to try.
But, yes, Jeff was a talker, and not just that, he talked to doorknobs, not just occasionally, but incessantly, his entire life. There was the one in the spare bathroom he particularly liked to talk to, and we have an actual transcript of a Jeff-Talk uploaded on the Doorknob Channel so you can see for yourself. It’s horrible, we know, to find this out now, too late to do anything about it. Maybe we could have helped him if we would have known sooner. It’s an absolute shock really, but someone has to set the record straight, lay it all out there, get a handle on things so to speak and let history be the judge.
Do not weep for him. NO! Jeff would not have wanted that. He would want you to hold your heads up and be proud and know that his place in heaven will not be hampered by any entrance above that he cannot talk to. He would want you to believe there is no doorknob that is beyond his grasp. He will meet that Great Door In the Sky, yes he will, and turn that knob, maybe twice, and if it doesn’t work, he will talk to it until it does, YES he will! He will get through that precious access, that gate and prevail! He may first have to introduce himself to it, chit-chat for a couple of hours like he did to all the doorknobs on Earth, ease the redemptive tension, but he will triumph and have victory over that final doorknob. We know this about him, so there’s no chance he might turn the knob and be put off. Even as I speak, he is talking the ear off that Great Emancipating Doorknob right now, reunited in endless conversation for an eternity with the One-Who-Made-All-Doorknobs.”
That statement will be read by my daughter. She will begin with a discussion of beets and by taking small sips of highly nitrogenated spring water while throwing back some vitamin D, and then she will reveal that I had discussions, some of them rather deep, with doorknobs. After her touching eulogy, as those in attendance approach her and reach out to hold her hand, they will tell her how sorry they are for her loss. There will be tears, but tears of hope as she offers them a small doorknob magnet as a commemorative keepsake with her hand and a small bag of mixed nuts with her other. Then, honoring my last and final request, all the doorknobs will be removed from the funeral parlor, and she will be forced to talk with every last person in attendance and I am certain she will be able to do that for hours on end.