Beyond the Fire Door

Fire doors are gateways to another dimension--a dimension beyond sight, but not beyond sound. You wonder just who is on the other side--a prospective soul mate? A future spouse? A freak? And why are they making those oh-so-strange sounds? Be warned: alarms may blare when you open the door, but these threats are barren, at most. You may find that the door, no matter how thin, separates you from your neighbor for a reason.

For example, the last thing Sam, an advanced standing junior in Kirkland House, wants to do is become friends with the people through his fire door. "There's this girl who lives through the fire door who has the loudest voice possible," Sam laments. "I've gone through every variety of ear plugs. She talks on the phone all day, so I know everything about her--her love life, her menstrual cycle, you name it. Sam's roommate clearly, you name it. Sam's roommate clearly revels in the noise just as much as Sam does. "My roommate will yell stuff like 'I have a gun tonight and I'm gonna shoot people who are really loud.'"

Threats, however, are to no avail. "They lower their voices for about 30 seconds but then they're up again at 1,000 decibels," Sam finishes sadly.

Sam's tolerance runs low when it comes to the racket that he overhears, but when it comes to his own privacy, he has no secrets. "I'm sure they hear everything too," he says, "but I don't care. I've got nothing to hide. Like when my girlfriend would come over, she would joke around and moan and stuff."

The downside of Thin Wall Syndrome intensifies particularly when bedrooms or common rooms are adjoined to bathrooms. "The boy next to us has a piano or a keyboard in his room," Lowellite Megan DuBose '97 said. "Whenever we go into the bathroom, it's like we have a stereo in there. I feel a little self-conscious going to the bathroom. Like the other day, I could hear the beeps on his computer. Now, if I can hear those beeps, then I know he can hear us going to the bathroom."

One Kirkland House resident feels shame every time she goes into the bathroom. "You'd think you could be private in your own bathroom, but you know they're listening to everything you're doing," Kate, a sophomore, said. "When you can't even throw up in peace and quiet in your own bathroom, you know there's something wrong. You think I could go and take a shower with someone in there? No way--they'd hear everything." Ay, the troubles we do face.

Some people can't be satisfied with hearing the people on the other side. They just itch to see them too. Debbie Martinez '97 of Lowell had block mates who were graced with apersonal encounter with their neighbor. "They woke up one morning to find this guy passed out on their couch," Martinez said. "I guess he just broke through the fire door the night before when he was really, really drunk.

Some other fire door neighbors take full advantage of their easy access. "We play a whole bunch of pranks on the girls through the fire door," an advanced standing the fire door," an advanced standing junior said. "We put Saran Wrap over their toilet seat, and they do stuff like put those rubber lizards in our beds. It's cool, though, we just hang out sometimes."

Pete Peraud '98 of Canaday B and his block mates choose to keep their fire door open all the time. "Within a week of school starting, one of my roommates was dating this girl across the way," Peraud said. "In the beginning, we'd go and shut it, but it always got opened up again. Then my roommate drew up this petition for us to sign saying that it was okay to leave the door open." Another roommate in the group, Christian Ruff '98 added, "Whenever my roommate and his girlfriend fight, there are always ten people involved." Defeated, he said, "Now that it's open, it stays open."

When the realization hits that those little creatures on the other side must be shoved back into their cages, frenzied efforts to re-seal the door are put into play. "We attempted to close the door, but that just didn't work," one Cabot sophomore said about his struggles with his firedoor neighbors while living in Canaday last year. "We tried putting furniture in front of it, we tried rope, then we finally tried super glue. Even after that, the door would be opened some times.

"What could we have been thinking?" one resident of Canaday said about his now-open fire door. Perhaps human nature got the best of them, and the sinful pleasure of eavesdropping wasn't enough anymore. At any rate, maybe from now on they'll make it a point to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.