Stairway To Stupid
Humanity is slowly becoming devoid of intelligence.
I’m sorry if this comes to a shock to any of you, but it’s true. People are gradually becoming dim-witted zombies, walking from place to place staring down at their cell phones with their mouths open. Although I’ve been known to stroll along, BlackBerry in hand, mouth agape, that’s beside the point.
I don’t expect everyone to be a genius. I realize that the IQ of the entire nation is sure to slip as information becomes more available, thus giving people no reason to actually remember things. That said, a little common sense goes a long way.
Case in point: As I left class the other day, I had to go down some stairs. Problem was, my path was blocked. What was in my way? Oh, just two girls. Standing. Having a conversation on the stairs. And not just a “Hi, how are you” conversation, but a real discussion. They had no intentions of leaving anytime soon.
Did I miss something? When did stairs become a place to meet up with your friends and discuss the issues of the day? The campus is littered with a plethora of benches and seats, where it is fully acceptable for you to hold conversation.
On another occasion, I was en-route to the lovely Reporter newsroom when I noticed a large obstacle on the stairs. What was it? Some sort of boulder, or perhaps a trash bag?
No, It was a rather large student, sitting on the steps eating his lunch. Mind you, roughly 20 feet to the left of the behemoth were tables on which he could have parked himself. Oh, and by the way, those stairs he was sitting on, rise adjacent to the cafeteria at North Campus. I can only imagine the scenario playing out in his head.
“OK, I got my food. Now should I sit over there in the cafeteria. Nope, too much noise. How about these tables over here in the courtyard? Nope, I don’t want to be seen eating alone. AH HA! The stairs! Genius. No one uses those concrete motionless escalators!”
I want to know what is so hard about using the stairs properly. I’m no engineer, but I imagine that those dividing rails found in the middle of the stairway were put there for a reason.
The reason I imagine would be, to control the flow of traffic, enabling everyone to use the side on their right; this is what we call the right-of-way. All of us with a driver’s license do it every day; we stick to the right side. This is how we know where the other members of the human herd will be moving.
If everyone stuck to the right, there would be no questions or confusion. No awkward, back and forth movements on the stairway, no running face-first into people with their face buried in their mobile devices. Things would work much smoother if everyone realized this. There would be no more bumper to bumper traffic on the stairway.
Stairs are a wonderful invention. They enable us to access different levels of a building on foot. I’m hoping that the herd will eventually apply common sense to this wondrous invention, so we won’t need an “Intro to Stairs” class at MDC.
