My favorite door of all-time was the front door on the house where I grew up in St. Peter, Minnesota. It was a big, heavy door that only closed well if you gave it a big shove. I associate places with doors, my different homes and apartments with their doors. I can picture everyone in my mind, along with their windows, locks, and door nobs. I think that doors are about separation, security, passage, barriers, and entrances. There is nothing as final as a locked door for which one doesn’t have a key, but nothing says “home” like sticking your key in the lock and opening the lock and the door. There are all kinds of different doors: patio, front, back, side, sliding, wooden, glass, metal, open, car, closed, broken, squeaky, stubborn, locked, unlocked, barn, garage, french, stage, and revolving. We build our structures with doors in mind as points of egress, but then we lock them to keep the world out. I once painted a friend’s front door red, so that he could sell his house. Some people never use their front doors and go in through a side door in their garage. I love doors that have locks that you have to turn four times in order to throw all of the bolts that hold the door in its frame. I think it is harder to break down a door than it seems when the cops do it on television. I bet that kicking down a door that is in good shape is nearly impossible. I hate it when people hang things from my front door nob, and I make it a point to always throw that stuff away. Do good doors make better neighbors? Sometimes, when the front door bell goes off I pretend no one is home so that I don’t have to talk to strangers selling odd things. Flat doors can double as ping pong tables. What is actually the point of having a peep hole in a door? To appeal to the closet voyeur in us all? It is always a mystery what is behind a door you don’t know. I have never understood the appeal of glass doors, other than to let light in. Revolving doors are like toys with which you can play, and are usually fun, except if you have to get luggage through them. The golden doors on the baptistry in Florence are perhaps the most artistic and elaborate doors on Earth. Doors on an outhouse usually have a half-moon carved into them in order to provide light and ventilation. I think that the name “suicide” doors that are on some cars is a most unfortunate name. Closing a barn door after the horse is gone is a useless effort. Leaving the door open may be a sign that you were born in the empty barn. For most men, leaving your barn door open can be a public embarrassment. Jim Morrison and the Doors were a very strange rock group, and Morrison is buried in Paris in a grave that has no doors, except for him.