the habit of being

(Two more)

1. When I was a child, I was very particular about my socks. The thing was that I didn’t like to feel them. My mother had to align that little line across my toes just exactly right, had to pull and shove my heel into place, pat everything down and smooth out every crease. She sat on the floor with me, with a pile of balled-up pairs. I kicked and pulled them off. She tried another if the first wouldn’t work. If there was a bump in my shoe, I screamed. A thread between my toes sounded like a knife blade. Sometimes she gave up took me to daycare, unshod, apologizing to Miss Diane. I just couldn’t get them on her. Good luck, if you want to try it. Miss Diane thought it was because she let me go barefoot too long.

2. My problem with escalators is that I’m afraid of falling. I hesitate about stepping on. I want to hit the first step dead center, and there’s only a small window. I usually let one or two steps go by, trying to get the timing right. This is embarrassing when there are strangers waiting, but my friends are worse. They’ll realize I’m a few steps behind, gripping the rail, and say, Oh yeah. I forgot about you and escalators. Then they think it’s hilarious to jump around, to show off how unafraid they are. They walk from step to step, get close to me, turn around with no hands, tell me how they’ll block my fall. And I always say Stop it, That isn’t helping, It isn’t funny. They seldom stop. If my center of gravity ever shifts at all, a wave of nausea runs all the way down me, so I clinch all my muscles to my bones and keep my breathing shallow. They have to laugh at me all the way down, and then they take too long getting off, and I’m afraid of banging into them on the bottom. And then they forget about it, until next time, when they say Oh yeah.