One Staircase, No Waiting

Humanity is uniquely subject among animals to fear. For animals, it seems that there's a much greater measure of rationality to the fears- a firmer backing behind them. The cobra fears death at the hands of the mongoose, for example, and is quite right to do so. He furthermore handles that fear in a more productive way than his human counterpart. Perhaps all this is because the power of analytical reasoning is beyond such a creature's ability even to understand as a concept, let alone to attempt. Our knowledge of it is in a sense our downfall, because we then get the erroneous idea that we can do it.

A longstanding fear of mine which has relatively little reason behind it is that of escalators. For whatever reason, I can't stand to go up very steep ones, because they're rather frightening to me. I do it anyway, because I at least have the fortitude to respond to that particular fear correctly, but I assure you that my knuckles are white from the death grip I put on the guide rail. I start off fairly ordinary, but the longer it goes on, the more formidable an escalator that suggests, and I start getting more and more anxious, approaching the point of losing it entirely just as my feet find purchase on the surface of the ground or floor that dastardly mechanism leads to.

What's curious is that going down even a very steep one has no effect on me, and the story is the same on both scores in extreme cases where stairs are concerned. I noticed this years ago when I was attending a baseball game. Being that it was a major league game hosted by a huge, entirely modern stadium, my cheap seats were accessible only by a series of exceedingly steep escalators and staircases. The steps leading directly to the row of my seats was such that I felt I must be ascending Everest without the aid of climbing gear or bottled oxygen. It was tough to take.

I am told that this fear has its genesis in the hazy, hoary days before I turned three. There was a near-catastrophic escalator experience which I have no memory of- only many memories of the story being told. Might it really have embedded itself in my subconscious for the purpose of intercepting my sensory experience of such conveyances and substituting a primal, infantile response for the rational, mature one which I by rights ought to be feeling? This is all suggestive evidence of some kind, but I can't say where it points. Perhaps I'll experience one of those implausible trigger moments from the movies.