Step Up

Our dining room is small, about twelve feet by twelve feet, I think. There’s a tiny kitchen, maybe actually a kitchenette, off to the side of it, and it opens up to our living room. It was probably a beautiful wooden floor at one time. In the present time, it’s a bit worn. The floor is raised about four or five inches and creates a small deck. I’m not sure why the designer chose this, but, hey it was the seventies. I bet the trailer had some pretty cool shag carpet and wood paneling at the time, too. Don’t misunderstand, I actually love that dining room. I think the wood floor is nice, especially since it hasn’t had to be replaced and has remained sturdy. Some of the best times of our marriage has included that room. Many a game nights have seen us at the table, in that room, trading blows at spades with our sons and their mates. We’ve probably played every board game in our robust “game closet” in that room. It holds a lot of good memories. No, what bugs me is the extra step up to enter the room.

Okay, four inches isn’t very much of a step, I know. Can you guess how many people have tripped on that step? Me neither, because I don’t know exactly how many people have been in the house since it was built. I can guarantee you that’s the same number that have had near death experiences while trying to pass innocently from one side of that cliff to the other. I personally have tagged, tripped, wobbled over, and stubbed into it a least four million times in the past eleven years. Sometimes loudly. Sometimes gravity took over and I kissed the floor. There’s been instances of people teleporting into the living room loudly, using only a dining room chair that attempted to stay balanced on only three legs. You’re not really a member of this family until you’ve nearly died going into, or coming out of, our dining room. Call it a rite of “passage”. The phrase “watch the step” is quite well used around here. After you’ve neglected to heed that warning the phrase you hear next is “there’s a step there”. That’s what is heard while you are either picking yourself up from the linoleum or, after a near miss, trying to slow your heartbeat down to a non-stroke inducing rhythm. It’s like the weather. We all get a piece of it.

I think it’s an inspired design, that floor. It’s a lot like life. Seriously. We see the room. We want to go into the room, but there’s a step there. We know there’s a step there. We know it’s only four inches tall. Not much of an obstacle at all. We still trip on it. Sometimes we fall. Rarely, but occasionally, we will bleed as a result. We’ll cuss at it, laugh about it, and then forget about it until we “rediscover” it later. There’s so many things in life that are exactly like that step. Tiny obstacles like getting out of bed. Going to work. Having gas in your car. Shaving. Balancing a checking account without paying the bank fees. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Rolling your eyes too loudly at your wife. Little things that we all trip over from time to time, although we know perfectly well they’re there. Sometimes we trip hard (and need a ride to work), and sometimes we just have a near miss (and our wife decides not to notice your eye-roll). Whether we end up with a skinned knee or just a faster heart beat we still have to pick ourselves up, learn from it, and try not to do THAT again. Then we move on. We don’t let those little trips stop us. That dining room is still a pretty good destination, and we won’t let that obstacle stop us from eating our dinner, or playing cards or a board game, because those people we love are there, too. They’ll be the ones telling us “there’s a step there”, because they care. And they’ll still think it’s funny after all these years. So whether you’re stepping over obstacles in life, or in my dining room, be careful. There’s a step there.