Stairwell Aficionado

My very own stairwell! AND I'm drinking wine, as of writing. This really brings me back to the early days of Stairwell Aficionado when the stairs were close to home and when the Two Buck Chuck flowed like my mother's disappointment. I have a real job now, so the disappointment is minimal. I assume.

Anyway, let's escape reality and move on to what we have here—right outside my front door. So it's a pretty standard apartment building stairwell—three floors; concrete steps; wooden hand rails; plastic siding—it doesn't get more generic. It's kind of like this Charles Shaw Red Blend I'm drinking straight from the bottle, now that I've forgone my glass. I usually get Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, but a Red Blend is tasty, even if it has no personality of its own. It's similar to me at work: there is no Dan here, only Worker #1370 operating at peak efficiency.

My neighbors have this lovely rock by their door. But the real story is the spot just below this picture.

Yeah, this area right here. In this very spot was a white gum wrapper. It held this location down for many months, no resident willing to pick it up and carry it to a trash receptacle—to grab it is to admit that it is yours OR to submit to the incessant recklessness of one's neighbors. I don't remember when it finally disappeared, but I'm fairly sure I blamed the wrapper's disappearance on the wind, as I highly doubt anyone here intentionally discarded its presence.

Alright, so here is my current conundrum: an unknown object that I refuse to pick up. It's origin is uninvolved with me. It's specification is unknown—kind of looks like a badly rolled joint. But I believe it's rolled-up lint—very light of weight, in appearance anyway. So here it stays, and I will continue to walk over it day after day. Yesterday I donned some disposable latex gloves, unearthed a plastic bag from underneath my kitchen sink cupboard, and waltzed down to the grassy area below my porch and cleaned up a bit of trash strewn about; I was tired of looking at a particular Rockstar Energy drink can while I smoked my marijuanas above. Yet here this odd piece of trash sits—I literally took that bag of litter up these stairs and crammed it into our trash can. I stepped over this thing when I could have ceased its existence in my life. Alas, I did not. Perhaps I've grown fond of it. If I name it (oh, something like Henry) I'll never rid myself of it. Oops.

Have you ever wanted to perform a few pull-ups from an apartment stair or two? Having your very own pull-up station right outside your residence just seems so convenient. And then you go and wrap your soft, moisturized fingers around one of those cementy boys, lift your feet a bit, and dangle. AND IT HURTS THE FINGERS. Like, ow. But you've already come this far, so you can't back down now (especially if a neighbor is watching (which I assume they always are))—you've got to bust out at least 5 pull-ups unless you want to look like a little bitch with wet elbow macaroni noodles for arms. So afterwards you just tell yourself you'll buy some thicc gloves that will protect your fingies. But then you figure that if you're going to spend any amount of money, you may as well buy one of those pull-up bars that hangs from your door frame. But then a disease rampages its way across your country and your money is scarce and should go to necessary items like food, but you end up spending your limited currency on vials of bath water from some sexy internet lady. Too specific? Naw, I didn't think so. We're all in the same (capsizing) boat.

These stairs are a real challenge* (*see bitch) when I've got four handfuls of groceries, but they're mine, and so I'm a bit biased.





PSYCH! I judge all stairs evenly. This stairwell gets 3 sore fingertips and soft biceps out of 5.