Fairy Tale Spotlight: Doors

There was a poem I read when I was young about doors. I cannot remember what it was called, who wrote it, or even the poem itself, but the theme of it is still in my mind to this day. The whole concept of the poem was about the mystery on the other side. I want to chat about these strange rectangular things today.

At the outset, doors don't seem all that interesting. They are simple things, often made of wood, that are used to close off one section from another. There is very little mystery to a door in and of itself. In your home, you can look at a door and know what is on the other side in your mind's eye, and you'd probably be right. After all, you've been through the door over a hundred times. So a door is really not all that fascinating.

Ever since I read that poem, I have always looked at doors in a different way. This way of looking at them more especially pertain to doors I have never been through. The problem is that, at first, I don't know what is on the other side. Some doors are transparent. A lot of stores do that. But not every door is so accommodating.

The main theme of the poem was that every door holds a mystery. Our mind's eye may try and paint what is on the other side, but it can't possibly know the truth of it. What if the room on the other side is nothing of what you expect? Will the shock be too much for you?

I have a memory from when I was very, very young. I was so young that I was, indeed, being cared for in a daycare center at the second floor of my local church. Usually they kept a good lookout for me, but one day I walked out of the room and began to explore the rest of the building.

The building was often used for various Sunday School activities for teenagers. All the rooms were empty at the time, but there were interesting books laying on these long tables that I would flip through. No doubt I was being looked for at the time, but they had not found me yet. In one of the rooms, I saw a curious door that I had never noticed before. It had a simple bolt lock on it, and so I proceeded to unlock it and attempt to open it.

The problem with this door was that it was painted over slightly. The paint had crossed the breach between the door and the frame. This made opening it very hard, but I pulled as hard as I could. My minds eye created a old and abandoned dark room that might be fun to see. I saw it filled with all kinds of interesting junk.

The dried paint began to give. I renewed my effort, and, with many loud pops as the paint gave away, the door popped open. A bright light struck me in the face. The door opened to the outside on the second floor, and there was no stairway or anything stopping me from falling to the ground below. It was so confusing. My heart sunk because I didn't understand exactly what was going on. Every idea I had about the other side of this door had been shattered. What's more, I did not understand why this door had even been constructed simply to lead someone to fall to their death.

I closed the door, feeling like I had done something wrong. The world stopped making sense, and I felt like I had been the one to break it. This was a door that was never meant to be opened. Were there there other doors like that in the world? I have been paranoid about that very question to this very day, yet... I continue to open them.

My caretaker found me wondering out of the room where the door was. I can't remember if she found out about me opening it, but I am pretty sure I got into trouble for leaving. I later was able to see the door for the first time from the outside. There it was... just stuck up there with no way to get to it. Many years later, metal stairs were built up to it, which is probably a good idea considering what almost happened to me.

Doors, especially the ones that had yet to be opened, create an unsettling mystery for me. I'm always afraid of what is on the other side. I am even more afraid of it not being what I expect, but that is how they operate. Doors block the other side from view until you make the conscious effort to open them. This is equally true in matters of fiction.

To cite a few examples, the doors in the early Resident Evil games became a cue for the unknown as they would force you to watch each and every door slowly open. The movie "Tron" had a very large door that took forever to open. This led to a hilarious amount of suspense before the movies first shocking sequence. In the fairy tale "Blue Beard," the door leading to the man's bloody murder chamber was a mystery until opened. "The Twilight Zone" used a door to represent the unknown in the opening sequence of the show.

Clearly there is a universal fascination with doors, but I think I had the experience of a lifetime involving them. I'll never be comfortable with doors. I'll always wonder if one of them will open and take me to somewhere I'll never be able to escape from. Maybe something on the other side will come and get me. There's no way of knowing until it's open... and the problem is... I'm just too curious a man to leave well enough alone.

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