Horsepistol #ThursdayDoors

[AMENDMENT: I forgotted to say that this is part of Norm Frampton’s Thursday Doors link-up. Go to Norm’s page, looka his doors, click on the blue frog button at the bottom of the post, and see who else is being doorish this week.

“Horsepistol” is what my grandfather sometimes called the hospital. He was a funny guy, my grandpa.

ANYWAY, I went to visit a friend in the horsepistol last week, and NATURALLY took pictures of doors.

They had these beautiful photographs on the walls of Louisville parks and such (the horsepistol is in Louisville, Kentucky). Some of the pictures had doors beside them, very classy and unobtrusive and design-elementy. This picture is of a stretch of Beargrass Creek.

I asked if I could open the door and photograph what was inside, and was given permission.

Ta-daaa! Storage! So cool!

Naturally, my friend had a bathroom in her room, with a walk-in shower and all. The door knocked me out. Not literally, you know. I just really dug it the most, to use the vernacular of my early youth.

Why did I love it so? Check out those hinges. Yes, it’s a two-part door, with the two parts being asymmetrical. We all have our little door fetishes, and asymmetrical doors are one of my many. See, you can open the regular part.

And, if you’re in a wheelchair that won’t fit through there, you can open both parts.

I suppose you could just open the little part, if all you needed to do is pop something into the soiled linen bin.

Don’t know why everything came out a little blurry. Probably because I WAS VISITING MY FRIEND IN THE HORSEPISTOL or sumpin.

She’s home now, btw.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Does your main character have strong feelings about horsepistols? Has your main character ever been in the horsepistol?

MA

 

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About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

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One thought on “Horsepistol #ThursdayDoors

  1. Joey

    March 16, 2017 at 1:02pm

    That is indeed attractive AND useful. I love me some form, but function wins with me every time. 🙂

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  2. Dan Antion

    March 16, 2017 at 2:41pm

    I also love asymmetrical doors. In fact I like saying asymmetrical. I also like saying asynchronous, but I digress. I recently took photos of hospital doors when my daughter needed some hydration. I didn’t see any as cool as that one. Nicely done and you should get some bonus points for staying focused (almost) on the doors while under the stress of being in the horsepistol (which someone in my family also used to say).

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    • Author

      Marian Allen

      March 16, 2017 at 3:10pm

      Kinky Friedman says it, too. You think you and I are related through Kinky Friedman? How could would that be?

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  3. janet

    March 16, 2017 at 10:23pm

    When I was growing up, we often said “Horsepistol” for the less interesting “hospital.” I have no idea if it started with my dad or his parents, but we still say it when I’m back there.

    janet

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    • Author

      Marian Allen

      March 17, 2017 at 10:04am

      Horsepistol seems to be pretty wide-spread in the US. I haven’t found a common source, so maybe it’s just the kind of substitution endemic to American humor. Or “humor,” if you don’t think it’s funny. 😉

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  4. Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt

    March 16, 2017 at 11:34pm

    To answer your question: my main character is a (former) physician, so hospitals would have been well known to her from training and practice.

    You’ve identified a buried thread.

    Never heard ‘horsepistol’ until today – makes sense.

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  5. Deborah

    March 17, 2017 at 8:23am

    LOL! I have never heard Horsepistol before you wrote it. I love it when quirky names for things stick and become family traditions. We have a word for instructions thanks to my daughters pronunciation when she was little.

    That asymmetrical door is pretty cool.

    I’m glad your friend is home now! You can’t ever get any rest in a Horsepistol! 🙂

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    • Author

      Marian Allen

      March 17, 2017 at 10:08am

      Well, what’s the word?

      Horsepistol seems to be pretty common in America. As far as family traditions, we call plastic containers tug-o’-wars because that’s what our youngest called them, having misheard the brand name Tupperware.

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  6. Norm 2.0

    March 17, 2017 at 7:00pm

    Interesting design for a horsepistol door. Part of me wonders though if this was intentional or just a retrofit to compensate for someone goofing in the design or in the order for the doors. Hospital doors are usually wide enough to accommodate the width of a wheelchair from the get-go. Or maybe this design was cheaper than the wider 1-piece door. Hmmm….
    I do love the way they hide the storage space. It sure beats staring at gauze and rubber gloves 😉

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    • Author

      Marian Allen

      March 18, 2017 at 8:29am

      The bathroom was crazy-go-nuts huge, so I asked meself: why that door design, and why a room bigger than the usual ADA-compliant room? And my answer was: to accomodate a gurney, so staff could wheel a bedfast patient into the bathroom and transfer him/her to the shower seat with minimum trauma to the patient? In fact, if they had a special shower bed that folded down at the feet and up at the head just a mite, that would fit into the whacking big shower stall.

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