Stairs

Living on the bottom half of our two story house, I ventured up the stairs nearly every day. A long rectangular handrail hung from the left wall of the stairwell and soft, thick brown carpet graced the stairs themselves. Upstairs lived my older brother in a tiny room originally referred to as a den. My older sister partitioned off half of the living room and claimed it as her own, leaving a significantly smaller living room in her wake. The only other room was a small bathroom the two second story inhabitants shared.

Conquering the stairs opened up a world of excitement, joy, happiness, pleasure and bliss. In other words, the Nintendo lived upstairs. We crushed King Koopa and rescued the Princess countless times, but it never lost its appeal. We spent hours making and racing on custom tracks for Excitebike. The only gun we were allowed to play with shot down thousands of ducks while playing Duck Hunt, but we never failed to shoot the dog when it laughed at us for missing a duck or two. We never thought that shooting a Gumshoe to make him fly, catch balloons and avoid various obstacles was pointless or boring. Because the Magical World of Nintendo lived upstairs, we never thought twice about journeying up the long flight.

One day, as usual, I climbed the stairs, only to find that my older sister wasn't pleased about my entrance into her domain. It happened often, but usually her anger died down, controllers were picked up and contests were initiated. For some reason, she was very adamant in her desire to have me leave that day. She and I stood on the three-foot section of flat floor that lay atop the stairs before the doorway to the living room. We argued while she blocked the whole entrance way, arms outstretched touching both sides of the stairwell. I tried to barge my way in, but she resisted. Due to the fact that I was twelve years old and she was fourteen, her rippling muscles and calcium-rich bones bested me. I tried numerous times to break through the roadblock of a sister, but she persisted. On my last attempt, she put an end to my uprising.

With a push, I fell backwards and hit the side of the staircase. Still off balance, I slipped off the wall and started rolling, falling, careening down the stairs. As I bounced off every stair, I thought to myself, ow, this hurts. Whenever friends stayed the night at our house, we would ride down the stairs using pillow padded sleeping bags as toboggans, stopping only when we hit the wall at the base of the stairs. It was great fun and we laughed the whole way down, but this experience was different. I derived no such elation from being thrown down twenty feet of stairs.

I laid on my back at the bottom of stairs, thinking to myself, ow, this really hurts. I had some bruises and a headache, but no serious injuries. I could see and hear my sister at the top of the stairs laughing at me, not a laugh that said "haha, I almost broke your neck," but a laugh that said "haha, I can't believe you were so stupid as to fall down the stairs." While indisposed on the first story of our two story house, I took the opportunity to do some pondering. I realized that if I was ever in that same situation, I would either have to be stronger than my sister or just concede to the dominant powers of the second story.