LOCKED DOORS

I’m sitting in my car outside a liquor store, feeling ashamed for reasons that escape me. I just tried go in to pick up provisions for a trip but the doors were locked when I pulled, and the store was closed. I wasn’t ashamed of buying booze and it was almost noon so I wasn’t desperately early. All my life I’ve been wary of trying to open doors that may be locked. Pulling on a locked door has always felt humiliating to me, far beyond the twinge of disappointment and embarrassment I suppose most people feel. I’ve even discouraged people I was with from trying doors that might be locked without exactly knowing why. And sitting in the car outside the liquor store I finally figured out why.
My birthday is in early December. When I was very young the local school district required students to be 5 by the end of November to enter kindergarten, but my Mom thought I was precocious and had me
take a test to prove I knew enough to take on the academic rigors of show-and-tell and nap-time. I’m certain it wasn’t so she could get free babysitting for me via the public school.

So Joey Rayburn (Why I have remembered his name for more than 50 years I don’t know) and I took the test to get into school and we both passed. I guess I was 4, possibly 5, when my Mom got me dressed in my fanciest clothes and dropped me off in the rain outside school. I remember a swirling crowd of kids and parents and I remember going up the steps and pulling on the big, bronze handle and it not budging, and turning in a panic, and seeing my Mom’s car starting to pull away and I turned and ran toward the car not noticing that a ditch now filling with rainwater stood inmy path. But I didn’t hesitate for an instant and when I emerged on the far side of the ditch my clothes were soaked with rain and plenty of tears. And sitting ouside the liquor store I realized why I don’t like to pull on doors that might not open.