i am neurotic.

I have a horrible fear of going down escalators. Going up, I am perfectly fine. If I attempt to go down an escalator without counting five steps, I fear it will tear me to shreds.

If I am walking up a staircase, I must either hold the railing or walk extremely slow. If I don’t do this, I will trip on a step, fall on my face, and subsequently knock out my front teeth on the edge of a step. This is twenty times more scary when I am holding too many objects to grab the railing.

I have to walk slowly and methodically with my hand on the stair rail the entire time I climb stairs. I can’t risk not being prepared to catch myself for when I fall, and I will fall.

I never run up the stairs because I am afraid of the moment. the moment I realize i’ve jumped a little too much but not enough to skip two steps at once.

When I was a kid, I used to have to count stairs when i ran up or down them, and I’d have to do it in time to the 1 to 12 song on Sesame Street.

When I’m going up stairs, I can’t follow anyone’s footsteps unless I truly, genuinely wouldn’t mind ending up like them. So if a person I dislike is going up or down stairs ahead of me, and their left foot lands on the 3rd step, my right foot must be the foot that lands on that 3rd step.

I always try to land on my right foot when walking down stairs. To this end, for every set of stairs I regularly use, I memorize whether I need to start out on my left foot or right. Similar thing for going up – I take two stairs at a time, and if I have to take an extra step, I have it at the beginning rather than the end.

When I walk up or down stairs I usually count them. When there is more than one flight it bothers me if each flight doesn’t have the same number of stairs.