I try to hold doors open for people, or swing them wider so by the time they get there it’s still open.

Men, bless their little hearts, are so not expecting anyone to hold a door open that three times now they have tried to walk through me. I’m on the other side holding it and they are looking above me or past me or through me and they just try to keep on keepin’ on. And then they pull up short like, Whoa, lady, where did you come from?

Well, sir, I did not suddenly spring out of the bushes. I’ve actually been standing here for a solid 10 seconds. I don’t mean to get overly technical but it is not possible for the mass that is you to occupy the same point in the space-time continuum as the mass that is me. A proof of this could be graphed or expressed mathematically, but the QED will come when you barrel right into me. Males who are not trying to phase through me frequently say, “Thank you!” I try to always say thank you regardless of which gender is doing the holding.

OTHER WOMEN NEVER SAY THANK YOU. In fact, they frequently put on airs as though my sole purpose on this planet is to hold a door open for them. This makes me want to slam the door on them but it’s too late they’ve already passed through. Plus it is hard to slam doors with closing mechanisms. They do not close with a satisfying BAM! At most they go Whoooooooooosh…click. It’s like trying to angrily hang up on someone with an iPhone. I’m jabbing at the screen like I mean it!

On two separate occasions I have gotten caught up in the door stratagems of women.

One woman has a bag or two on her shoulder and a coffee in one hand. I am walking down the hall and she sees me and sends me this look like, “Um, a little help here would be nice!” and I looked back at her vaguely perplexed because the door she is opening so slowly swings inward, which means regardless of what she is carrying, all that is required of her is to lean slightly with her shoulder or to push lightly with her ass. Really, no effort at all is necessary because gravity does all the work for you.

So, to my mind, by the time I break into a trot and hold the door, she will have by all rights gone through it already. She does not. It takes her a good 20 seconds to open it, all the while looking at me like I’m the biggest bitch on the planet. I’m looking back at her like, Lady, unless the door outweighs you, in which case you literally weigh 10 pounds, or you have bone cancer, in which case you probably shouldn’t be tottering around in stilettos, why do you need assistance? If she had yet to swipe her card or if the door swung out, I would gladly have come to her aid.

That she was blonde and skinny with one of those tight ponytails didn’t help matters any. I really have it out for women with tight ponytails. If you don’t know which ponytails I mean, go to the Upper East Side and walk around for a while. 85.4% of tight ponytail wearers, especially blondes, are super bitchy by default. I cannot prove it scientifically, but I am convinced of a strong correlation between the tautness of one’s ponytail to the bitchiness of one’s manner.

The second woman is leaving the building through the revolving door. She must see my approach in her peripheral vision because what she does is she gets in the door and pretends to push but in fact she is not pushing. This becomes evident to all because she miscalculated and I wasn’t close enough to the door yet so what she is essentially doing is standing stock still in a revolving door, pantomiming like she’s pushing. Then she begins to push a bit just so it moves and I get in the door and push, too, though not hard because I want her to do some of the work. Again, this door simply requires a person to make some kind of bodily contact with it and gravity does the rest. In addition, Newton’s First Law of Motion comes into play if by walking up to the door you generated momentum.