"The door was open—"
* * * * * * * * * *
This is the kind of response saved for being suddenly confronted by a hostile gatekeeper of any business you thought you had some kind of social contract to access.
"Hey! Get the fuck out of here, you miscreant!"
"Uh, the door was open?"
"Whoa whoa whoa! Who the fuck let you in here?!"
"But the door was open!"
"Isn't it past your bedtime, sonny?"
"The door was open em dash"
What that means, subtextually, is that Randolph expects the world to work in a systematic and just way. He wasn't expecting the ageist abuse heaped upon him for simply entering a place of business.
Digression: I remember when my twelve year old nephew kept yelling, "Shut the front door!", while we were playing some stupid game. We were at my Aunt's house for some holiday and the front door had been left open. I kept wondering why he wanted it shut and why nobody was listening to him. I finally said, "If you want the door shut, get up and shut it yourself!" He didn't take me to task for being out of touch with the kid's lingo because, I think, he just thought I was telling him to shut the fuck up right back.
That was also the day I taught him how to swear without swearing by yelling, "Flush it!" His grandmother put the kibosh on that almost immediately.
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