Stair By Stair
Everyone is so obsessed with climbing. Higher and higher, but where is the top? What will it feel like when you reach the apex and find another staircase, leading to an elevator, leading to a rocket ship?
My English teacher in eighth grade wrote on a report card that I had “severe cerebral atrophy.” She didn’t understand that I had somehow found solace as a new kid in school by messing with her. To be honest, she made crazy seem like a teddy bear sitting on a bench seat looking out of a window on cool Spring day. She was at her pinnacle.
In college, I was so full of mononucleosis, I couldn’t go to my early classes. I was taking Political Science and a question on the test was “What is NOW?” I answered, “the present.” I found this uproarious. Now, I find it irreversibly embarrassing that I didn’t know it stood for National Organization of Women. I was descending.
I’ve climbed a lot of stairs in my dreams. I don’t think I was ever going to get anywhere. I liked it that way. Some mornings, I woke up wishing I could just keep walking instead of going to school. My mom always knew when I was playing sick.
Compounding is the simplest thing to understand in the world, but it takes patience. You can’t have a beach body by Tuesday, especially not with the three margaritas you had last night. You can’t learn Japanese through an app in a week, especially not when you keep checking your Instagram messages.
My calves were always big. I walked to and from school since first grade. I didn’t realize it was a thing until a girl said something to a friend, who told a friend, and they told me. “She likes your calves.” At the time, this meant nothing to me. I had never looked at another person’s calves. Missed connection.
I went to a Lifetime for about a year, and they had the old StairMaster. I got a strange pleasure out of climbing it, old-school style. I could have one of those in my house. I would imagine walking up the stairs in a random office building in Kokomo, Indiana, wearing business casual attire. However you pass the time.
My cats fly up and down my stairs, chasing each other with reckless abandon. I don’t think they ever think about the steps they are getting in each day. Neither am I. I am just pushing my meat sack through the day.
I spend most of my days trying to take it stair by stair until I realize I’ve been on solid ground the whole time.
© Jonathan Greene, August 13, 2026
