Taking a stand on the stairs
If you’re ever in
the vicinity of a flight of stairs and you hear a woman yelling at her kids and
cursing the elevator, that’s just me.
Make sure you say hello.
It all started
when I attended the College of Wooster.
My study room was on the third floor of the geology building and one
year for my New Year’s resolution, I vowed I would never that elevator
again. Surely I could walk up three
flights of stairs. It would be good for
me, especially based on the amount of late night pizza I liked to consume.
That resolution
quickly became the best resolution of my life.
I stuck with it not just that year, but ever since that year. (I do have a limit, though. Hotels and other skyscrapers I most
definitely take the fancy box with the bright buttons.) To this day, I am quite happy about the
decision I made.
My children,
however, tend to disagree. They haven’t
quite grasped the concept of enjoying walking up stairs as much as I have, but
it’s not for lack of trying. I also make
a point of parking far away in parking lots, which may be #42 on the list of
why I’m a bad mom.
Living where we
do, we don’t encounter very many elevator situations. High rises in Wayne County aren’t that prevalent,
but that doesn’t mean that in our very special and dear library there isn’t a
set of eight stairs (yes, only eight – compare that to the 1,860 stairs in the
Empire State Building) right next to an elevator. And while the elevator is perfect for moms
with strollers and folks who are unable to climb those eight stairs, that mechanical
people raiser just beams in the fluorescent light to my children.
“Can we take the
elevator? Please please please?”
“Nope,” I
respond, sticking to my guns.
“But whyyyyy?”
And that’s where
I had to come up with a reason better than, “when mommy was in college and ate
too much pizza she decided to always take the stairs and that’s just how it’s
going to be.” So instead, I thought
about it and decided to tell them, “because someday you might not be able to
take the stairs, and if that day comes, you’re going to really wish you
could. So just get it all in now.”
And that’s the
other gun I’m sticking to.
I’m not sure they
quite understand, but if repetition has anything to do with it, it’ll sink in.
We recently
stayed on the fourth floor of a hotel that had an elevator right next to the
stairwell. One afternoon as we were
headed down, a woman joined us in the elevator wearing complete running gear. Ipod booming, stretching her calves, she rode
the elevator down four flights so that she could go out for a jog, or maybe
even to the gym to do the stair-machine.
My oldest was the
first to catch on, bless her, and gave the most appropriate eye-roll I’ve seen
in a long time.
America is well
known for being overweight, unhealthy, and out of shape. A friend of mine blames it all on ranch
dressing. I’m giving some blame to the
elevator, seeing as you burn about 10 calories per flight of stairs and about
negative three standing and waiting for an elevator.
With any hope, my
kids will grow up to embrace their youth and be stair steppers, even without
the resolution and the late night pizza, and learn to appreciate the fact that
they can walk up and down stairs as they please. Even better? Someday they’ll thank me.
I just pray that
they don’t thank me by a trip to New York City or Toronto; The CN Tower has
2,579 steps.
Comments
I look forward to more of your entries!