Change: Going Down the Up Staircase

I had already reconciled the extended time I was going to spend at the end of the social distance waiting line outside of Whole Foods. I picked a time of the day when Whole Foods enthusiasts gathered in sequential order to become immersed in the total grocery shopping experience. The idle waiting time allowed me the opportunity to revisit some earlier random thoughts when she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, to occupy the spot behind me. It took several seconds for me to connect the visual with what I knew to be true, yet I couldn’t help but speak to the woman who looked as if she hadn’t aged a day since I last saw her.

“Mrs. Kirk?” I queried

She smiled and nodded. “Yes, it’s me.”

“But, aren’t you dead?”

“I think so”, she replied “But you can’t always be certain about these things.”

While uncertainty is a benchmark all things human, I was absolutely certain that this was my sixth-grade homeroom teacher standing behind me in a Whole Foods line. Yet, uncertain as to my own mental state. 

“Just to be sure that I have not gone, completely, off the rails,” I said. “What was that song you had us sing every morning after the Pledge of Allegiance?”

“You mean the one that goes, ‘If you want to have muscles, you must exercise, you must exercise…,”

The muscle memory that kicked that verse back into the forefront of my brain brought with it the pain of her tone-deaf soprano. 

“It’s YOU,” I interrupted. “What are you doing here?”

She batted those heavy-laden eyelashes and said, “You sent for me.”

“I don’t recall sending for someone who is tone deaf.”

“No, what you asked for was an answer to the question, ‘Where does change begin?’” Her matter-of-fact statement had me wondering if I’d been talking to myself, out loud!

“I wasn’t asking anyone in particular,” I said. “I was reflecting on social events and just wondering.”

“Do you remember where our classroom sat on the second floor of Maybee Elementary?”

“Right next to the staircase,” I said

She smiled and said, “Specifically, next to the Up staircase.”

I hadn’t thought about that interesting piece of elementary school mania since I transitioned to Middle School.

“I remember,”

“And do you recall receiving 4 citations that semester for the mis-use of that staircase?”

“Mis-use?” I said, “I went down the UP staircase because it was easier to get to my hall assignment.”

“Was it because it was easier or did you just not like the rule?”

“I didn’t really like the rule.”

“So, you challenged it.” She said. “Why?”

“It didn’t make sense, to me. A staircase is a staircase! As long as we weren’t sliding down the bannister or throwing out bodies down the steps, the rule served no purpose other than to keep us orderly.”

“Yes, but after your class graduated and moved on to middle school, we got rid of that rule.”

“What?”

She paused, “The rule no longer made sense and we were just hanging onto it because it was a rule that we knew. No one questioned or challenged its relevancy, until you received those 4 citations. By the way, it’s still a record.”

“Mrs. Kirk, I couldn’t have been the only kid to have broken that rule.”

“You were the only one who did it consistently.” She seemed to reflect for a moment. “You were always fascinated by those things that went against the grain.”

“I was?”

“Do you recall a field trip to the Aquarium at Belle Isle?”

I nodded.

“There was this one instance when everyone in your class was watching a school of fish all swimming in the same direction in that circular tank, but not you. You were fascinated by the one fish that was swimming in the opposite direction of all the other fish. You spend several minutes watching him swim and dodge his away around the others. Once I saw that, I knew. I remember saying to myself, ‘this boy is trouble’. I remember mentioning it to your mother.”

“You told my mom?”

“She already knew.” She said, “Change begins with a single individual trying to make sense out of things that are utter nonsense. The answer has been there all along, it just takes a willingness to see things differently, try things differently and be willing to endure a few citations to make the point.”

“And, what am I supposed to do with that?” I asked.

Mrs. Kirk smiled and pointed toward the front of the line, “Close the gap?”

I only looked away for a moment. When I turned back to say, ‘Thank-you’, there was just me.

“Now, what am I supposed to do with THAT?”