On my way home from work the other day, something that normally doesn’t happen to me, happened to me. Listening to my iPod and walking about, minding my own business, I was walking down some steps towards the subway platform when I noticed that the subway was already there with its doors open. Seeing as I wanted to go home early that particular evening, I decided to make a run for the doors. I started double-stepping down the stairs, which I do every now and then, in hopes of getting to the subway doors in time. Then I heard that all familiar tone for the subway; the one that indicates the doors are about to close. This tone – as conservative as it is – triggered something in me, making me go even faster down the steps. Already double-stepping down, I knew my feet couldn’t go any faster than it already was. But this didn’t stop my brain from thinking I could make it down there in time.

The steps at this particular station was quite long. Longer than your average set. I was about halfway down the steps when I heard the tone. I rushed without thinking, and before I knew it, my feet were way ahead of me, with the souls of my shoes slipping and sliding on the edges of the stairs. I fell back – thankfully not forwards – and in an effort to regain my balance, one of my feet instinctively tried to go back to save myself from falling completely on the ground. As I was on the stairs, there wasn’t a large surface for my foot to make contact with, so it landed on the edge of the steps, where my not-so-cool sliding action began.

I guess you can say my foot acted as a surfing mechanism, and seeing as the length from one edge of the steps to the next wasn’t all that much longer than the length of the sole of my shoe, I was able to glide down the stairs. Unfortunately, this wasn’t as cool as it sounds. The foot that went back wasn’t strong enough to support the momentum of my body going backwards, so my butt ever so gently scraped the edges of the stairs as I glided down.

I reached the bottom of the stairs where I stood myself up and looked towards the train as its doors closed right in front of me. At that point, I saw the people inside looking squarely at me. I thought to myself, “from their perspective, they must have seen me disappear halfway down the steps only to reappear back at the bottom of the stairs!” A cool view, I thought.

I smirked thinking I could have made it into the subway, but instead made a fool of myself. The subway left the platform, and I sat down at the bench, resting my slightly sore bottom. I looked behind me at the stairs and quietly admitted to my defeat for that day: subway stairs 1, me 0.