Stop laughing; I know you are. Ok, so I'm not as terrified of them as say, a loved one getting sick, or dying alone, but as far as concrete day-to-day fears go, yes, escalators top my list.
To be fair, it's not without reason. When I was five years old, my mother and I took an ill-fated trip to the big G-Fox department store in Hartford. (On a side note G-Fox went out of business shortly thereafter. I'm sure it had nothing to do with me, but the store's demise quite pleased my vindictive little five-year-old self.)
So anyways we're at G-Fox. I have no memory of the outing up until the time we were leaving, but my memory is crystal clear as we step onto the escalator down to the ground level. All of a sudden, 3 steps from the bottom, something is very wrong. Mommy is yelling, people are running frantically and I'm looking bewilderedly around me. The escalator has stopped. Looking down, I discover I can't see half of my right foot. It is trapped between the grated metal step and the side wall of the machine. My shoe and sock are gone. I was not ok with this!
Now I join in the panic. Security guards are talking over the screaming, trying to figure the best way to free my foot. A sales woman gives me a baby doll in a lavender plaid dress and I clutch it distractedly. I can't feel anything, like I'm numb all over. But I still can't see my foot. One of the security guards has procured a crow bar from who knows where. He wedges it in the crack between the step and the wall of the escalator, near my foot. He leans heavily on it and finally, with an ugly mechanical creaking, a hole appears between the once flush walls of metal. My foot is released, miraculously whole.
It was red and soon to be swollen, but there was no blood. My shoe and sock were nowhere to be seen in the gaping insides of the escalator. I was quickly scooped up and bustled into a waiting ambulance. As it turns out I was fine, no missing toes or broken bones. My mom even made me go to school the next day with my right foot bundled in a slipper.
But yeah. I'm not a fan of escalators.
1 comment:
OK, I remember that event largely the same way, but with one notable exception and a couple of not so notable ones.
Actually the store was in West Hartford and it didn't go out of business as much as get bought by Filene's. Those are the "not so notables."
The notable one is what happened after your foot got sucked in and you spun completely around to me and shouted, "Mommy."
I saw where your foot was and all I could think about was the story I'd covered in Honolulu about a little girl who'd lost her thumb in an escalator. I was instantly flashing forward to you without toes, or even without the foot and how we were going to get you through all that. I was sure something gruesome had happened and it was just the pressure of the step and the wall acting as a tourniquet. And all the while I'm thinking this, I'm screaming the primal scream of a desperate mother lion.
You were pinned there for at least 10 minutes and no one could get you out. It was the EMTs who found the crow bar. Yet ...Here come the notable difference... While I was screaming you reached up and took my face in both your hands to pull my eyes to yours. Then you said (I can't make this up) "It's OK, Mommy. Everything is going to be OK."
YOU were the calm steady one in the face of the panic.
You were right. Everything was OK. Your toes were intact. Your foot was intact. The only damage (besides your very credible fear of escalators) was that three days later, all the skin peeled off your foot.
But your calm at that moment showed me there was a lot more going on with you than met the eye.
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