Heavy Metal

Our new puppy Lucy is a delight. She’s affectionate and happy, and when we walk her around the neighborhood the attention she receives makes us feel as if we are strolling alongside Beyoncé herself.

She’s been a tremendous addition to our family.

But she’s not without her faults. Mostly, jumping. And while this was cute the first few weeks we had her, when she was less than a foot tall, it’s now a bit of an issue because when she jumps it puts her head equal with mine and in a position that is appropriate only for ballroom dancing. And she’s clearly wanting to lead.

As an effort to make sure she doesn’t trample our children, or force us to Foxtrot, Jim and I enrolled her in a puppy training class. The first night of the class, I met with the trainer, who spent a long time assessing Lucy’s demeanor, behavior, and her total lack of response to me trying to keep her from mauling my face.

“Well,” she said after watching Lucy bounce around like a puppy half her weight. “It’s very clear what you need.” And with that, she put a small, square piece of metal in my hand.

“Taser?” I asked.

“No!” she said, not amused. “This is a clicker. It’s used to train dolphins.”

From there she showed me to use my thumb to press down on the small metal button, making a pleasing in-and-out clicking sound, like that of a Snapple being opened. She showed me how to command Lucy, and once she responded accordingly, click the button and give her a treat. 

Within minutes of showing me this technique, Lucy understood. And short of skimming across the water and clapping her fins together, she was responding to all the new commands I was giving.

The trainer cautioned me with one very important warning: never click without a treat.

At home I showed Jim how to use the clicker, and he stood in awe as our 3-month-old puppy put her tail on the floor and patiently waited for a small bite of kibble. We worked on other commands like “stay” and “come” and “fetch,” all of which were now suddenly possible because of this tiny piece of metal.

It seemed impossible that an inanimate object would possess more power than two humans of sound mind and good upper body strength, but so it was.

The metal made the difference.

I care, perhaps too much, about the spaces I occupy. I am concerned with how furniture is placed, how books are arranged, how art is hung. My pickiness in this area has to do with aesthetics, sure, but it also has a lot to do with functionality.

My office space is no different from, say, my home. Though there are some big limitations on how I can tinker with the aesthetics of my 12-foot-by-12-foot office. And even less opportunity to improve the functionality.

For the job I do, and the way in which I do it, my office doesn’t fulfill all my needs and desires. There’s not an open congregating space for students to gather and talk. There’s no couch or cool, vintage table where I could move from my work desk to sit with community members or prospective students. There are no plush rugs and, regrettably, no wet bar.

But, as it is, I make due with the office I was given. It’s small, but mighty, and its six foot tall window running the full width of the office lets light stream in, suggesting an airy, happy quality about my space—and, I hope—myself. I purchased my own guest chairs to not only encourage more students to come and sit, but to also show that I’m more than just a professor—I’m someone who cares about lines that please the eye, and chairs created at the height of 60s style.

When I first took my job, I rummaged around in the storage room on campus to find the particular bookshelf and the matching oak white board to occupy my space. And, while most of the university has upgraded to nice, higher-end cherry-wood furniture, I adore my metal desk with laminate wood grain top because it’s nearly indestructible and responds well to magnets.

And though I can’t paint the walls, they’ve allowed me to hang a large collage of framed pictures of my children and husband. They said no to a metallic wall paper. And they wouldn’t even let me suggest a water feature. All in all, the office is as visually interesting as I can make it, and the functionality is high enough that I feel a wave of productivity when I enter it each morning.

But there is one glaring issue with my office, and that is the door. It’s solid metal, with no window. It matches the 50 other solid metal doors on the hallway, and the hundreds of other solid metal doors throughout the campus’s massive administrative building.

Without a window in the door, it’s difficult to know if I’m in my office unless the door is open. And if it’s a day in which I need to really focus quietly on something in my office, having the door open is problematic. But with my door, the only option is wide open or slammed shut. This is because each of the metal doors in the building has a hydraulic metal elbow at the top, connecting the door to the doorframe. This allows the door to close automatically behind me with just a slight tug on the handle. This also means that to open it and get it to stay open, I have to ram my hip into the side of the door, pushing past the hitch of the metal elbow until it catches. But for it to catch, I have to push the door so hard that it slams into the wall behind it, a wall I share with a colleague, which means every morning I start my day with a loud wall thud, an apology shouted to my neighbor, and a sore hip.

Never finding a balance between wide open—and therefore constantly available for interruptions—and closed shut, therefore suffocating in the heat or cold (and wondering what I was missing out on in the hallway), I came up with a solution: remove the metal elbow.

I marched down to the administrative assistant and asked to have a work order placed on removing the metal hitch. She asked me if I was sure I wanted to do that. I said I was pretty sure but let me go home and think about it from all angles.

That evening I was preoccupied over dinner while I played out all the scenarios that would happen in my office if the metal elbow were removed. Before bed, Jim found me in our bedroom doorway just swinging our elbow-less door back and forth. “This makes sense, right?” I said to him as I stepped in and out of the room, sweeping the door wide as I did.

“As much as you ever do,” he yawned, crawling into bed.

The next day I told the assistant that I was sure I wanted the elbow removed. And then I became nearly jittery at all the possibility that lay before me.

I could come into the office each morning and put very little effort into opening my door. I could leave it at a 45-degree angle throughout the day. Or 55 degree. Or 20! The possibilities seemed endless.

That’s when I realized how much this foot of collapsing metal was affecting my work. I mean, sometimes when a student comes in to talk the conversation becomes somewhat private in nature. Sometimes they need to talk through a bad grade. And sometimes it’s even more private—like a personal crisis. When this happens I always instinctively get up and flick the door, making the metal elbow respond by closing it dramatically shut.

Then that raises the stakes as if what my student is telling me is CIA level classification, when it’s really just something that needed the door to be at a 15-degree angle. A signal to others in the hall that a moderately private conversation was taking place. Come back later.

But every single time that door slams shut, the student across the desk from me flinches as if they are now on trial. Or regret opening up to me. I can never find a solution to this.

There is such a thing as too much and such a thing as too little, and this damn door was the definition of that. It was affecting my privacy, my openness, my productivity as a professor who operates with an open door policy. Even if that policy leads to closed-door conversations.

But sadly, a few days after submitting my work order request, the maintenance crew informed me that they would not be removing the metal elbow on my door for a surprisingly long list of reasons, most notably—and one I certainly respect—the safety of those on a college campus.

This was frustrating. One small piece of metal was the difference maker of me being the best I could be at my job. I wasn’t asking for too much. I had carefully considered my request. I was being cool with the “no wet bar” rule. But this, this made me feel helpless to control a problem in my life.

And at home, mastering puppy training hit a few bumps. My children quickly became enamored of the small metal clicker. We were hoping we could use it on them to encourage them to clean up their messes or to prevent tantrums, but it turned out the girls just liked the sound it made. And, taking the trainer’s warning very seriously, Jim and I ran around the house shoving treats in our puppy’s mouth every time the girls grabbed and randomly clicked the button. After a while, the metal clicker became of no use to us because it meant nothing to Lucy. We had to make do with our own verbal commands and rewards.

And, surprisingly, Lucy is still listening. After all that, maybe that little square of metal wasn’t really the difference maker we thought it was. I mean, she’ll sit, come, fetch and stay on command.

But she still loves to square dance.

And at work I find the frustration of the hydraulic elbow on my office door—and being told I’m stuck with it—is subsiding. Mostly because I’ve noticed that the flow of students willing to come talk to me, even about private matters, hasn’t slowed down any.

So I try to forget it’s there and focus on welcoming every student who takes time to come find me in my office for a chat.

But I’ll continue to caution everyone: Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.





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