Escalators scare me to death. Going down is worse than going up. I’m not sure if that’s symbolic of anything, but if I wrack my brain long enough, I’m pretty sure I’ll come up with some sort of imagery and hypothesis as to why the downward spiral is worse than the upward approach. But that’s not the point of me talking about escalators.

I remember nearly falling down the escalator at the Dallas Galleria mall one afternoon while in middle school. My foot chose a spot that involved two steps on the escalator, and naturally one step separates from the other, and my foot had to decide which step to stick with. And aturally, it stuck with the one that went down first, and the rest of my body nearly followed. My mother grabbed me in time to shake up my senses and make me pull my body weight backwards. I never looked at an escalator in the same way again.

I work on the fifth floor of the retail building. The stores take up the first four floors, and the business offices take up the remaining five floors. Since a section of our department is scattered throughout the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors, I am regularly traipsing from floor to floor, and my two options involved the elevator and the escalator. While I would rather take the former, I end up opting for the latter on a regular basis, and my routine is quite hilarious and odd if you don’t know me (and yes, I have to explain to every single person who walks with me that I am petrified of escalators). I watch the steps go by…one two three that one no that one no no that one come on Jodi you’re wasting time pick one okay that one that one now go GO! This can last for two steps or it can last for fourteen steps, and I’m not exaggerating. The steps keep revolving and I keep staring and waiting for the right moment to reach my foot out, plant it firmly, and hope for the best (and for balance). Mind you, if you were wearing four-inch Manolo Blahniks (by the way, these things are every bit the heaven that Carrie said they were in "Sex and the City"; you just have to try a pair on—if you’re into that sort of thing--or buy your girlfriend/wife a pair to understand—which might be dangerous, so I wouldn’t recommend that), you too would have a slight skip of the heartbeat every time you were forced to step and balance on a moving staircase.

The stairs never stop moving. I could stand at the top of every escalator and watch the teeth separate, the step move down, and the next one repeat the action and take its place. Over and over, much like a revolving door (those kind of creep me out too…moving too fast, too slow…I sometimes fret that I’ll only manage to get half my body in and an arm will be left behind, or I’ll fall forward and continue twirling about the only entrance way into the building). It’s amazing that I can manage to make it anywhere in life. I won’t even get into the ordeal I go through just to get into and out of my car. I’ll save that for another blog entry. I just wonder what it is that makes my mind break the decision down and say, "that one…that opening, that step…take it now." It’s like that with life too. The steps we take, the people we meet, the phone calls we make, the times we open and close our mouths…all of our decisions are just stairs in the escalator of life, and we determine when to move forward and when to stay behind.

I just watched The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Could you imagine washing your mind like you wash your dishes? The yummy cake remnants…gone. The ucky fish grease…gone. The caked on cheese…gone. The bits of potato…gone. Into the dishwasher they go, dirty and spoiled. Out of the dishwasher they come, sparkling clean and ready to be used again. But that’s the thing. Ready to be used again. The same slice of cake, piece of fish, square of grilled cheese, bits of potato return to the ceramic place they once were, only to be eaten and washed away again. And again. And again. Wash all you want, and the memories will never disappear. Wash all you want, and you still have lessons to learn.

I suppose if one mastered the art of time travel, then we could not only save our memories but actually relive them. Per someone’s suggestion on here, I picked up a copy of The Time Traveler’s Wife and am about halfway through a truly delicious book. I am doing the stairmaster backwards as well as the treadmill, and if you think I have problems with the escalator, you should see me trying to remain in the upright position while also moving backwards on any cardio equipment. I not only have an opportunity to kill my quads; I also get to nearly kill myself…which I suppose is killing two birds with one stone. Oh forget it…no more jokes today. That one was bad.

Anyway, in this novel, a woman goes through life knowing whom she is going to marry and the man goes through life haphazardly, even getting to spend time with himself in a different realm of time. (Could you imagine that…you at 40 talking with you at 15? Good lord! What would you say to yourself?) I want to discuss this book further but I don’t have it in front of me (I’m at work…eating, taking a lunch break, legitimately taking time for me), and how in the world is one supposed to adequately discuss a novel without utilizing quotes from it? Suffice it to say, that if I had a choice to either constantly revisit moments in time or simply wash them away, without a choice of whether these moments were the pleasant ones or the ones that left a sour taste in the mouth, I think I’d rather experience time travel than a total brainwashing. How about you? Think about it. Besides, who’s to say you won’t end up in the same exact place at a later date, just like you do with time travel, and just like you do when taking the escalator…or the elevator…or swinging through the revolving door. At some point, you’re going to end up in the same space, just in a different time period, and it’s how you handle it that will be the difference.

Just more food for thought from a girl who can’t choose her own food.