A dark ascent
I live on the fifth floor and I walk the stairs when I do not have a 20-pound backpack and five-pounds of groceries to carry. I left the school last night and had dinner with some of the other teachers. By the time I went home it was dark already. It is really hard to push myself to walk the stairs when the lights in the stairwell do not work. The lights on the first to fourth floor are all burnt out or the motion/noise detector is defective. I do get light when I pass by the third floor though because the detector in the third-floor hallway works like a charm.
I suppose I would not think twice about it if I were walking in a well-constructed stairwell but it is not. Let me start with the hand rail.The underside and sometimes the side of the handrail has this rough texture to it. It feels as though the wood was not sanded properly or something went wrong with the paint and it now has a texture similar to stucco applied in that prickly fashion. Then there are the actual steps. It starts out okay, you walk up the first two flight of stairs and you think you are on any other flight of stairs then it turns on you. As you hit the third floor, the steps start to play tricks on you. As I climb the stairs between the third and fourth floor, I feel as though I am going to fall backwards. As I climb the stairs between the fourth and fifth floor, I feel as though I am climbing a near-vertical stairwell or as if I am going to fall flat on my face. I always know when I get to the fifth floor because I get the fall-flat-on-my-face feeling before I hit the fifth floor. I wish they would fix the lights in the stairwell.
