Parenting is hard, y’all.
There is so much we need to teach our children it’s overwhelming, and if we’re not careful we could be intimidated right out of having them.
Some things our children naturally learn on their own: how to walk and talk and spit out their peas.
Some things they need to be taught: multiplication tables and the fact that Columbus wasn’t looking for America yet there is a city named after him in almost every state.
Other things call for training. There’s potty training, and training a child to patiently wait their turn. Training them to sit still and be quiet in church. And then there’s doorknob training.
What? You’ve never heard of doorknob training?
Please come stay at my house and I will happily give you instruction in the proper use of doorknobs. I’ve shared my wisdom on this topic many times over the years, and it is seriously the highlight of most people’s stay here, even more than the cows.
In fact, we recently had some return guests and the husband excitedly told me the morning after they arrived that he remembered the correct way to operate a doorknob. He was so proud of himself and I was proud of him! See how fun it is?
I can’t remember exactly when doorknob training began, and I don’t remember specifically training my own children in this art, but I must have done it because they are all champion doorknob operators. The formal training of guests must have begun during one of those times when we had a lot of people in the house. I’m sure it was an act of self-preservation—or at least sleep preservation—on my part.
The biggest house we’ve ever owned was just under 2,000 square feet, not excessively huge. That means when there are a lot of people, there is also a lot of noise.
Now don’t get me wrong, we love our share of fun and chaos. But at our age (actually at any age for Ben), we have limits that seem to be creeping upward every year. In other words, we like our sleep, and our sleeping hours are getting earlier all the time.
I remember the days of staying up to watch what I called “pitiful PI shows” when we were very young. Ben would turn the volume way down on Matt Houston or Riptide (the one with Murray Bozinski) and I would rock whichever baby to sleep and we would maybe get to bed around 11 pm.
These are not those days. A pretty normal bedtime for us now is 9 pm. I actually like to be in bed reading by 8. That may sound extreme, but Ben gets up at 4 or 4:30, so it’s really not that ridiculous when you look at it in terms of in-bed hours. He just likes to sleep different hours from other people, like working the early shift.
Our days of late nights filled with raucous laughter are pretty much gone, except when our friends Tom and Karen are here. Then we break all the rules and it’s worth the sleep deprivation.
The rest of the time we put the pooper in party poopers. That means everyone in the house has to know how to be quiet, which is how doorknob training began.
One time there were a bunch of people staying at our house, which had hardwood floors throughout, with lots of echoing. There were literally bodies everywhere in the house, and that means lots of bathroom use, which is to be expected. We (Ben and I) had gone to bed and the bathroom rounds began.
Click-bang. Click-bang. Click-bang.
I lay in bed staring at the dark ceiling, counting the click-bangs to see if I could figure out when the last one would happen, and eventually it did and everyone went to sleep.
But the next morning my lack of sleep drove me to hold an impromptu training session. It was all in good fun, but as all joking matters do, it included an element of truth: doorknobs have a function and they work two ways.
Doorknobs are designed to retract the little post-latch-thingy so you can get out of the room you are latched into. You turn the knob, the post retracts, and voilà, the door swings freely, allowing you to walk through the doorway and exit. It’s like a mini marvel of engineering. Seriously, don’t you wonder who designed the first doorknob? I bet they are a millionaire now.
But there’s a second use of doorknobs that is just as amazing if used properly, and I’m about to tell you how to do it. Don’t be intimidated. I have taught people of all ages the secret of doorknob function.
When you go into a room and are about to shut the door behind you, wait! Turn around and face the still-open door. Turn the doorknob so that the little post-latch-thingy retracts and hold it that way, then push the door (quietly, shhhh) into the closed position, then carefully and in a controlled manner, turn the doorknob so the little post-latch-thingy sticks back out into the hole in the doorframe that catches it. The door is now shut all the way and you have gotten inside the bathroom in near silence. (Better lock it if there are lots of people in the house.)
Haha! Do you see what you did!? You used the doorknob in the second way and NO ONE HAD TO WAKE UP TO A CLICK-BANG! All it takes is a tiny bit of attention and anyone can do this, even a little child or a teenage boy!
Trust me when I say that everyone in the house will sleep better when all the residents know how to perform proper doorknob operation.
This whole topic came up once again this past weekend when we were staying at a local hotel so our friends could use our house as an Airbnb for their daughter’s wedding. They had a lot of people coming from out of town and it just worked out well for them to have the whole house (and me to not see the utter devastation). So here we were at a lovely hometown hotel on the same weekend as the anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant at the historic Appomattox Courthouse. If you know anything about history, you know this is a big deal. The hotel is full of people (mostly Confederates with ULTRA-MAGA stickers on their cars) dressed up in Civil War garb reenacting the famous events, and apparently they are also reenacting the fact that no one knew how to use doorknobs in 1865 either.
All weekend the walls have been rattling with the slamming of doors next to us and across the hall. It took all my willpower to not go over and hold doorknob training with Confederate soldiers right there in the well-appointed hallway last night. I should write an online course and charge money for it. I know firsthand there is a need for doorknob school.
And now that you know the proper way to operate these modern marvels of engineering, go practice and let me know if it works for you too!