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The Gate
Marcel Agueros, Alum
Columbia College 1996


During the spring of my sophomore year I moved into a room on the 2nd floor of Hartley, a forced exile from my beloved McBain that I did not take too well. I took it even less well when I discovered that for security reasons the window in my new room was guarded by an ugly, massive metal gate to which I formed an instant dislike. Who was going to climb up to my room from Amsterdam Avenue? I therefore took it down, put it in a closet in the hallway of the suite, and forgot all about it--until the end of the semester, when our RA came around to inspect our rooms. In a panic, I managed to sneak the gate into the room, locked myself in, and desperately started remounting it. Naturally it weighed three times what I remembered; sweating, cursing, and frantic, I took a good chunk out of my right hand while fighting with a screwdriver--the last thing I needed was more housing troubles...

I ran out of time before I was done: I'd turned the RA away a couple of times and so reluctantly opened up when he knocked again--and he took a quick look around, nodded his approval, and left--and I realized that the gate was mounted backwards. I'm pretty sure I took it back down and put it in correctly, but I can't swear to it...

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