I Walk Right Through the Door

Every week or two, ESPN.com offers Uni Watch from Paul Lukas. He details trends & changes in uniform designs. All the links open up in a 2nd window so you can just alt-tab back and forth between the two. It's one of my favorite columns that ESPN.com offers. Speaking of ESPN, they recently sacked everyone's not-so-favorite College GameDay commentator, Trev Alberts. We cry for you Trev, we oh most certainly do.

So I was over at the M.A.C. earlier today as my first day working in the shoe lab. I've got a part-time position working at the Runner's World Shoe Testing Lab which is located here in East Lansing. Basically I'll drawing from my two fields of study -- the mechanical testing I learned in my Materials Science & Engineering degree and the Biomechanics/Kinesiology degree I'm getting here at MSU. The building contains the M.A.C. along with medical facilities. Entering the building there are signs that say to use the revolving doors. It is not a big deal to me and I feel no need to disrupt authority so I go through the revolving doors. Fast-forward to later when I am leaving. There are no signs saying which is the preferred door to use upon exiting. I see people approaching the revolving doors coming in, so I head for the manual doors. There is an older gentleman getting dropped off outside. I'm about to open the doors when they open up automatically. Apparently they are motion-activated. Cool deal. So I head out and pass the older man and he says to me "You don't look like a cripple."

WTF? Seriously, WTF dude? I'm just walking out the door man, chill out. I'm not trying to show you up. Although if I knew ahead of time he was going to comment to me, I would have proudly displayed my awesome physical prowessness when it comes to bipedal motion. I know I can walk with the best of them, and unfortunately from the looks of it old man, you can't. Your days are well behind you. So the doors have the little Handicapped symbol on them. Does that mean we discriminate and only let you "cripples" (from what I'm told they don't like that term. But maybe it's like with other minority groups where those within the group can address themselves by terms that would otherwise be considered offensive. i.e. blacks calling each other nigger, gays calling each other fag...but that's a topic for another day). Listen fella, I have as much right to that door as you do. One thing I've learned throughout the years is that we all need to be inclusive. To me means letting in people from outside of your demograpic group. The street goes both ways. We want non-tradional populations to be incorporated into traditional ones AND we want traditional populations incorporated into non-traditional ones. Do you follow old man, or are you just old and cantankerous? Although I shouldn't blame him. My goal is to be as cranky & crotchety as possible when I'm in my golden years.

And to end on a completely unrelated note, I can't get enough of the new Stellastarr* song, Sweet Troubled Soul. Good stuff. And for whatever reason (good or bad has yet to be decided) I'm digging on the new Franz Ferdinand song, Do You Want To? It's nice to have a band (i.e. guitar, drum, bass) that can make you dance!