Local boy called as janitor

Last night I dreamed that I was standing in the hallway of the LDS chapel in Kirtland, Ohio, where I used to go to church ages ago. The building was empty, and I think I had stopped there so that someone I was traveling with could use the bathroom or something. I was standing around waiting for this person.

Across the hallway from me was a door, identified by a little plastic sign jutting out perpendicular to the wall as the custodian’s supply closet. There was also a little plastic plaque on the wall next to the door forbidding unauthorized entry. (The precise wording of these two signs was not clearly defined in the dream.) To the left of the door was a big corkboard with various notices pinned to it.

Out of boredom, I took out my phone and googled my own last name. I was startled when at the top of the search results it said “Results near you” and had a photo of the door across from me, complete with the two plastic signs. Why was I getting that? Was Google given the realtime location of people named Tychonievich as a search result?

Then I noticed that the photo was actually subtly different from the door across from me, so I figured it was a stock photo of an LDS church janitor’s closet. But why would searching for my name return that result?

Finally I noticed something on the bulletin board by the door: a full-page article cut from a newspaper, with the headline “Local boy called as janitor.” Of course, I thought. That must be from decades ago, when my brother Luther was doing janitorial work for the church. As far as my dreaming mind was concerned, mystery solved.

As I was trying to get a good photo, trying to find a good angle so that both signs and the headline would be clearly legible, I woke up.

Shortly after getting up, I checked a couple of blogs and read William Wright’s latest, “Swampy Key Holders: Thomas B. Marsh and Pokelogan.” Thomas Marsh was a Mormon leader back when the church was based in Kirtland, Ohio, and William emphasizes Marsh’s role as a “doorkeeper” or “usher.”

Here’s what the Online Etymology Dictionary has to say about the word janitor:

1580s, "an usher in a school," later "doorkeeper" (1620s), from Latin ianitor "doorkeeper, porter," from ianua "door, entrance, gate," from ianus "arched passageway, arcade" (see Janus) + agent suffix -tor. Meaning "caretaker of a building, man employed to see that rooms are kept clean and in order" first recorded 1708. Fem. forms were janitress (1806), janitrix (1818).