Have you ever walked up a set of stairs when you knew something was not quite right, but you didn’t know what? More than likely, that momentary feeling comes when the steps themselves are not of equal height. Even if only one step varies slightly, the whole body feels out of balance. If each step differs in height, caution
sets in.
A home safety checklist states that “even a small difference in step surface or riser heights can lead to falls. Mark steps which are especially narrow or have risers that are higher or lower than others. Be especially careful when using stairs.”
Likewise, have you also noticed a time when a certain set of stairs seemed easier to climb than others? If so, you can thank the builder for a strict adherence to the building codes. Not only are there rules for safety, but also a comfort gauge for stepping up and down.
Stair building is both an art and a craft. We know that an attractive stairway can make us stop to admire. Of course, whole movie scenes have been built around actors descending or ascending the steps. Such scenes can set mood, forward plot, pan-in on the faces of actors. Beauty pageants often ask contestants to walk down a set of steps to demonstrate grace of movement. And usually, Hollywood can still generate a laugh when an actor trips on a toy left on the stairway. Remember the “Home Alone” series.
But building any set of steps also represents an exact craft. Its secret lies in the measurement and math of available space utilized within strict building codes. In the construction of steps specifically, as much as a fourth of an inch variation in riser heights can make users wary.
Certainly, escalators, moving stairways, have their own set of building codes. However, I’ve only recently learned that the inventor planned for escalators to be well hidden within a store so that a customer had to walk past more merchandise in an effort to locate them. Now I know why I always have to hunt for them even in stores with which I am familiar and why inevitably, I end up first at the descending ones instead of the ascending ones that I want.
So much in life resembles stairways. More times than not, we stand afar from many issues and evaluate them only within our own range of experience. At these times, we can be either generous with praise or cruel with criticism. It’s like the old saying, “We never get a second chance to make a first impression.” And, first impressions are often faulty.
Upon moving to Jesup, I said the first lesson I learned was not to gossip because everyone around here either knew one another or were related in some way. I’ll never forget when I met a new friend’s mother. Not long into our conversation, she said, “My cousin married a Denty.” Her cousin turned out to be my husband’s aunt. Talk about small world.
Then on occasion, we chance to climb the steps. At those times, we often change our opinion. At that time, we hear the old familiar phrase, “Never judge until you have walked in another’s moccasins for three days.”
Years ago when Bob was working in Canada, I was having trouble keeping one of our cars in running condition. Dear friends, both of whom were taking a course in auto repair through a continuing education course, asked if they could work on it at school. They managed to get it started and the wife drove it to their class while the husband drove their car behind her. After class, the wife drove their vehicle home and he drove my car to my house. Wanting to show off their work, he asked me to drive him home. In the short distance from their house to ours, you can imagine how many people we passed even at that time of night. All of them knew Bob was out of the country and that I had children at home. At the time, I wondered how many of them also knew our friend was taking an auto repair class and was just trying to help me.
Unfortunately, the car still wouldn’t start the next morning and with the first ring of the phone, I knew people were talking about what they thought they had seen from their own car windows the previous night.
Just as a master carpenter measures and figures exactly to build stairways to make them both comfortable and safe to climb, so we as human beings should likewise take care in the judgments we make. And the first step lies in a true evaluation of what we know and what we think we know.
2003
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