.htaccess and accessing root folders

can't access root

[WhosAWhata]

with this code:

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}!^(.*/index\.php$¦.*/$) 
RewriteRule (.*) index.php?page=$1 [L] 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/$¦$) 
RewriteRule (.*) index.php [L]

the code is in www.site.com/dir/.htaccess

i don't know how to fix this...
www.site.com/dir/
does work
but
www.site.com/dir
doesn't

[ukgimp]

[webmasterworld.com...]

[WhosAWhata]

thanks for that, but i couldn't get mod_dir to work

i tried adding it to the top
DirectoryIndex /index.php
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}!^(.*/index\.php$¦.*/$)
RewriteRule (.*) index.php?page=$1 [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/$¦$)
RewriteRule (.*) index.php [L]

and i tried changing
DirectoryIndex /index.php to
DirectoryIndex index.php

am i doing someting wrong?

[WhosAWhata]

fixed

RewriteEngine on  
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d 
RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R,L] 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}!^(.*/index\.php$¦.*/$) 
RewriteRule (.*) index.php?page=$1 [L] 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(/$¦$)  
RewriteRule (.*) index.php [L]