Door into the past

Last week I had to go get some work shoes to wear in the warehouse. Steeltoed non-slip shoes. The store was in Daly City so I took the BART and then biked to the shopping center where the Redwing store was. As I was walking around looking for a place to lock up my bike (there were none I had to lock it to a shopping cart corral) I passed by a Walgreens and the automatic doors opened. Stopping for a second I looked at the doors and noticed how worn and broken down they were starting to look. It reminded me of a recurring thought I've been having lately about how at one time everything was new. Think of your elementary school. No matter how long ago that was for me or you chances are we weren't the first ones to sit in our classroom, our desk, to walk down those halls. Sure it was a new experience for us. But those things had already been there. Now we may look around at things and see the dents, dings, rust, scrapes, bruises, anything that gives a thing the signs of age. But how many of us really understand that things didn't come into existence in their present form. It took time to get there. How many people had walked through that automatic door in Daly City for it to look the way it did? For it to not slide open smoothly? For it to have several dents near the lock? How many? Who were those people? What were their stories? Did any of them notice? When it was new? When it was not so new? Did they ever look at that door and think "Wow, how exciting to be the first person to walk through here" or "Well you can see that this door has been here about a year, but it still looks pretty new". Am I the only person who thinks about these things? Who cares about a door at a Walgreens in Daly City. One of many? The door has opened and closed countless times to accomodate hoards of customers through the years yet have any of them stopped and thought about their surroundings?

Well I did.

ATNN