[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Y'know, doors weren't always around. At some point, someone invented a door, and that had to be a huge advance.

Cavemen probably didn't have doors, but I bet they wanted them. The cavewomen were probably always complaining about sabertooth tigers and dire wolves wandering into the caves, and they'd say, "Hey! Og! Another sabertooth got in today and I had to chase it out with a stick. Can't you do something to put a thing in front of this opening so that doesn't happen? And by the way, all the air conditioning is getting out."

Maybe the caveman dragged some branches across the opening. Maybe not. I don't know. I'm not sure if it counts as a door if there's no hinge and no knob.

And if it wasn't invented for caves, at some point civilization started. Was the door ahead of civilization? Was it behind civilization? Perhaps the invention of the door is really a sign that civilization has occurred. Once you have a door, all sorts of good stuff happens. Vandals and visigoths can't get in. Flies can't get in. You can score with your cavewife or babyloniwife in relative privacy. It doesn't rain on your floor when the wind blows. Doors are really a key to the whole concept of home and hearth.

Maybe you have to have an actual house before doors can be invented. Maybe it doesn't work with caves. Maybe some babyloniwife said to her husband, "Y'know, if we could put some sort of thing in front of this doorway, we wouldn't get attacked by visigoths so easily. Make it so it's easy to move and we can go in and out whenever we went, but the visigoths can't."

Of course, she wouldn't have called it a doorway, because that would be premature. It would just be called a "way", or "that hole in the wall over there".

Maybe a door has to have a hinge. If the babylonians built screens and set them in their doorways (or screenways) and then picked them up and moved them to go in and out, are those really doors? Or do they have to be attached or moveable or both? It seems like there are lots of ways to define a door.

Anyway, just pondering.

I'm trying to picture you and Draper in the same room selling your ideas...