Blog

Every year around November 2, the internet decides the black stuff goes back in the box.

There's a specific kind of porch shame that arrives around the second week of November. The pumpkin has gone soft on one side. A cobweb decoration is hanging off a single nail because the other one gave up. And underfoot there's a doormat with a cartoon ghost on it that made sense for eleven days and now reads as "she stopped trying."

Most welcome mats are a statement. You walk up, you read it, that's the transaction.

In 1984 I was a high school kid at the North Carolina School of the Arts, sitting in an art history class I had no business being as obsessed with as I was. The teacher was Harry Titus. He was a professor at Wake Forest and he came over to teach high schoolers because he wanted to, which at fifteen I did not understand and at fifty-something I understand completely.

Go look at your doormat. Right now, I'll wait. If the letters are half gone, one corner's curling up like a stale sandwich, & the whole thing has faded to the color of a wet paper bag — congratulations, you've been living with a doormat corpse & greeting every guest with it. It happens to the best of us. In fact, this is my own sad doormat! The doormat is the one thing in the house that works hard every single day & gets thanked never.

Every three years, like clockwork, Kimani in Flushing MI places one of my favorite orders on earth: a set of THREE supersized mats, each ruder than the last. We're talking "Knock Hard But Not Like You The Police," "Come Again When You Can't Stay So Long," "Bitch Don't Wear No Shoes In My House," & the immortal "We Ain't Got Shit — Try Next Door." Kimani does not do subtle, & Kimani does not do small.