Stairs are Simply Satanic

Stairs, stairs.
They’re good for your heart.
But the more I climb,
The more I fall apart!

I was never one to run up and down staircases as a means of “working out”. In fact, stairs are pretty much the bane of my existence.

It’s fairly ironic, then, that I am forced to climb up to my fourth floor apartment multiple times a day.
Don't get me wrong, I love my old-school walk up. My building complex has an adorable Melrose Place feel to it. There’s even a small little fountain with turtles and fish chillin (chillin except when Ri feels the need to pick them up)! I would never exchange it for a cookie-cutter doorman/elevator building. Not in a million.

But the stairs...the STAIRS! Perhaps I haterate so much because I insist on running up those steep son of bitches as fast as possible – seriously, why prolong the misery? (No matter how much I amore mi apartamento, I'm still entitled to a good dose of complaining.)

Unfortunately, stairs are everywhere. And have been for millennia. Yes, they’re a good invention (you Machu Pichu peeps so smart! You Great Wall builders so brilliant!)

However, no matter how convenient, they’re still a pain in the ass.

Literally, a pain in the gluteus maximus.

It is a truth universally acknowledged...(a little Austen, anyone?) that if you do not pay attention to your butt, no one else will. Therefore I do, much to my chagrin, force myself to take the stairs when traversing floors in the office, or clambering out from underground Subway stations (which in my mind resemble the gates to Hell).

I know space is limited in New York City, but wouldn’t it be grand if, instead of those upwardly slanting steps of doom and gloom, there were nice sloping inclines – ramps, if you will.

There would be no panting, no sweating, no sore muscles, no swearing. And you’d still be working that derrière!

Stairs are evil incarnate. You fall down them, you get hurt. You climb up them, you get winded. You trip on the way up or down them, you break your wrist. They’re slippery, dirty, dusty, creaky, creepsters.

Can someone get an NYC civil engineer on the phone?