Going Downstairs

It has been some time!

I want to start this post by apologizing for my long absence. I could make excuses, long sleepless nights with a newborn, manual labor, and general constant tiredness don't usually translate to good writing, or any writing at all. That being said, excuses are like armpits, everyone has them and they all occasionally stink. You can judge my own for yourself, just know, I’m trying to deodorize. 

All I really want to do is to get back to telling some stories to you to give you a little enjoyment. My ability as a writer comes from my attention to interesting, amusing, or otherwise dramatic details in my days. That ability has been greatly dimmed, if not altogether blinded by tiredness. This means, my eye for funny detail is at an all time low. All I can see for now are very small humorous moments. As such, here's a short shorty story I noticed since I've been gone. I hope you enjoy!

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Going Downstairs

I was sitting at the kitchen table the other morning. Colleen, my wife, had gone to work, the now seven year old was in her room quietly playing, the baby was asleep, and the now four year old was riding her pink push car the kids have labeled as a bike for the mysterious reasons of children. It's the kind of toddler toy she outsized a year ago, where you ride it by straddling and pushing off the ground to propel yourself forward. A mysterious hush descended on the house, always a dangerous sign in that it pulls you into your own thoughts and lulls you into neglecting the cause of the silence because you finally achieved your daily parental goal of attaining a single moment of quiet. So as I sat there, sipping black coffee and staring into the abyss while thinking about nothing in the unfathomable way that only a man past his prime can, I suddenly heard a small, quiet voice a foot or so away say, “Now I go downstairs.” 

To set the scene, there are about twelve cellar steps that descend from my kitchen, where the cellar door is, down to the cement cellar floor that the children always keep littered with the most painful, Home Alone type toys the girls can booby trap the floor with, in order to harm my feet as painfully as possible every time I venture downstairs. A foot from the toys the facing wall of the basement is lined with storage shelves where I store everything from an antique kerosene lantern, various metal poles, boxes of books, and anything else I could think of that would necessitate a hospital visit for anyone who so much as brushes against them. Needless to say, simply walking down our cellar stairs is always a potentially dangerous feat. 

So, after hearing this voice it dawned on me that maybe I should look up and focus on what the owner of the voice was up to, considering everything going downstairs entailed. I shook my head clear of my near nirvana like trance and looked around until I spotted the four year old. She had wheeled her “bike” up to the open cellar door, and, sitting at the top of the stairs looking down them, she was, presumably, psyching herself up, Evil Kanevil style, to make that final push that would plunge her down the steps in a moment of, doubtless in her mind, fun and glory. 

“Now I go downstairs”, would've been the last words I would've heard her utter, surely, if her guardian angel hadn't made her say what she intended to do aloud, highlighting to me what was about to happen while giving me the time to yelp and grab her. It makes you wonder how often these forces actually get their physical charges through their days unaware of the dangers they constantly almost fall into. Replace “luck” with angels, and Mr. Magoo, seen through this lens, becomes a spiritual everyman's tale. If true, then the four year old’s angel deserves a raise!