Tie Thursday!

On Friday? Well, yes. I am late, but that is alright. Allow me to explain.

In High School my friends instituted "Tie Thursday" where our little Brigade of friends (Formally known as the Toast Brigade) would wear ties on Thursdays (all of us being female). Random? Yes. Strange looks? Very yes, that's the funnest part! Some of our ties were plain church ties (borrowed from brothers/fathers), others had themes (one of my favorites was my friend's Star Wars tie with a Han Solo T-shirt), but all were ties.

I never did end up making it to Thursday days with a tie and so I am hoping to make up for it by introducing a Tie Thursday post. Tie Thursday is, by nature (coming from the Toast Brigade), utterly random; therefore, all of my Tie Thursday posts will be likewise, making it perfectly acceptable that this Tie Thursday is in fact on a Friday. And thus the space-time continuum collapses and chaos ensues. Enjoy!


STAIR ADVENTURES!

Wide ones, skinny ones, long ones, short ones, tall ones, squatty ones, worn ones, cracked ones, slippery ones, steep ones, never-ending ones, spiraling ones, ... There are all kinds of stairs I come across in my day-to-day life, but some of the most interesting stairs I have come across are those that have a grotesque sense of humor (which, I would hazard to say, includes all stairs). Stairs, whether 2-step or 572-step, enjoy tweaking their position ever so slightly when their climbers least expect it and laugh their gravely laugh as their victims tumble. (Those equipped with railings often accent the laugh with "bonging" guffaws.)

Such stairs use every insidious fiber within their stony steps in attempts to trick their patrons, whether they be old, young, empty-handed, or shouldering the world Atlas-style. Some of their favorite pranks involve: adding an extra stair where there previously wasn't thought to be one; sneaking up on unsuspecting bystanders (or bywalkers to be more accurate) before said person has time to prepare to step up/down; looking innocently wet, but turning out to be dangerously slippery; adjusting the height/width of certain steps 'just so' so that climbers mis-step enough to tumble; or just up and snapping at those who attempt to take the stairs at to fast a pace. All of this tomfoolery can cause embarrassment, bruises, and scattered belongings at the least (many of which give one a therapeutic opportunity to laugh at oneself).

That being said, I have had ample opportunity to laugh at myself. (If I were in Mary Poppin's "I Love to Laugh" scene I would probably have burst into the attic on some occasions) I have had my share of bruised shins and knees from falling up the stairs at school (which I often show off to my brothers), my books/papers/music/clarinet causing a mess and noisy racket. If someone is around (usually some handsome boy) I laugh an "oops" to myself. If no one is around I still laugh an "oops" to myself. Oft times the silly grin sticks through to my next classes and refuses to leave (which tends to be awkward when the lecture subjects gravitate towards stoichiometry, gravitational constants, King Leer, or Sigmund Freud...but then the fact that I can't wipe the silly grin off my face makes me giggle, and I am sure my teachers/classmates are convinced I am a nut when they see my straining face and tears (from laughter) streaming down my cheeks. Looking at their concerned faces just makes me laugh even more. Such a predicament.)

Stairs not only can be tears of silly giddiness, but sometimes tears of ouchiness. When I was just a mite of a girl (a tall mite for my age) I learned from my older siblings and cousins the joys of stair jumping, like base-jumping, but without the parachute and with a much lower threat to life. My grandmother has a staircase to her basement which has a wall on one side and a railing on the other side through which small bodies can squeeze and jump the <6-7 feet to the floor below. During extended family parties many of the younger kids would swarm the stairs and play our jumping sport. The smaller kids jumped the lower stairs and the older jumped the higher and all was fine and dandy.

Well, all was fine and dandy until I decided I wanted to jump the highest stair. Being only about 5 years old at the time, I should have stuck to the "medium" stairs and not the tall ones. I climbed back up after a few test jumps on a lower, medium, and medium-high stairs and slipped through the bars and perched on the edge of the stair, contemplating whether I was "ready" for such a high jump. In a moment of blurred reality the stair slipped away (silly, mischievous, disappearing stairs...) and I was floating like an astronaut, slow motion, and carefree. I could fly!

But, alas! Slow motion never is slow enough. I crashed, I crunched, I crumpled, I snapped, I did what most kids would do: I cried. At the doctor's office the next day I remember the horror on my mother's face when I smiled, flopped my broken wrist around, and said, "Look Mommy! It doesn't hurt anymore, I don't need to go to the doctor." I don't remember the pain, nor do I know where all the other kids disappeared to. I think the number of children present is inversely related to the inconvenient accidents that happen. (a lamp breaks? a bowl is dropped? Where's the kids?...must have been sucked into a black hole) I hold no grudge towards the stairs, but I did notice a significant lack of stair jumping events at family parties.

I enjoyed my bright pink cast with its surface smothered in autographs (the purpose of such a tradition evades me, but the fun of it doesn't), even though I couldn't open a door, ride my bike with both hands, or bathe properly for 6 weeks.

Stairs give us convenience (escalators get a +10 in convenience points) and help us get from lower place to upper place and made possible multiple story buildings, and excitingly spooky stairwells. Thank you to the inventor of the staircase, but don't forget that to every bright, sunlit stair there is a dark side, full of pranks and sadistic humor.

Be grateful, but also Be Wary of the Stair.

-BandNeeek