Dana Lake ‘23
Production Editor
Tiny doorway on the second floor, we’ve been through a lot together over the last year. I’ve walked by you multiple times a week, every week, since last August. You’ve seen me through the ups and downs of 1L required courses, through making new friends and losing touch with old ones, through my first snowy winter, and back into balmy summer. Seeing you has always been a bright spot in my day, a small moment to let go of the stress of deadlines and outlines and think instead of the limitless possibilities you conceal.
My running theory, of course, is you protect a Coraline-esque tunnel to some parallel world where Virginia Tech has a T14 law school. There are good parallel worlds, too. I have a whole rotation of them: worlds without COVID and mask mandates, worlds where I’ve already finished school and I’m working full-time. Worlds where I made Law Review and clerk for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and worlds where I drop out and become a lobster fisherman on Cape Cod. You brought me a few moments of joyful self-care on bad days and several hours of maladaptive daydreaming on really bad days. I noticed you less on good days.
My exact mental projection. Photo Courtesy of a quick internet search. We here at the Law Weekly love intellectual property rights.
Tiny doorway on the second floor, we have some differences. You are tiny and door-shaped. I am a human woman of predictable proportions. You are secretive and closed-off, unknowable beyond the tantalizing “Fire Dampener” sign hastily posted on your frame; I publish hundreds of words of unadulterated stream-of-consciousness on a weekly basis. But I think we have more things in common. We are both here in this school, for one. People pass us in the hall and notice us, or they don’t. Maybe we brighten their day a bit. Hopefully we don’t make it worse.
I have never tried to open you. You were always minding your own business, doing what tiny doors do best. You don’t have any tiny window for me to peek in while pretending to walk to the breakroom to make sure you aren’t on a phone call before knocking. I wish you were on Microsoft Teams so I could at least see if you have Do Not Disturb turned on, but alas. With your solid wood door closed to the hallway, you might as well be an impenetrable fortress.
Tiny door, you remain a mystery after all this time. Photo Courtesy of Dana Lake '23
Tiny doorway on the second floor, I wonder if you were as embarrassed as I was when we explained this article idea to Editors Who Will Not Be Named and they immediately walked over and turned your handle. You swung open to reveal a tiny room, very dusty, very unlocked. Probably you have always been unlocked, which seems likely as part of the building’s Fire Code. I wondered why it had seemed like such a bad idea to open you, why I had been so sure I would get in trouble for trying. There was no reason to believe it was a big deal. I don’t even think your hallway has cameras.
I still smile when I see you in the hall because getting to know you better hasn’t made you less interesting. I still contemplate all the lives I could be living if I wasn’t right here right now, but I don’t need to project them onto you anymore. Instead, now I think about all the mysteries you’ve seen since the Law School moved into this building in 1997. We’re almost the same age, tiny door. That’s another thing we have in common.
What doors have you been walking by, wondering what’s on the other side without trying the handle? That’s right, sucker, it was a metaphor this whole time. Welcome to the self-reflection article. At the time of this writing, that little door in Slaughter Hall really is unlocked and waiting. Your door probably is too.
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dl9uh@virginia.edu