“Hello?”

“Hey, brother.”

“What’s up, my man. How are things?”

“Same. So, listen to this.”

“Can’t wait.”

“So, I took the kids to the mall the other day.”

“You took them shopping? Brave man.”

“No. I took them to play. We literally go to the mall to run around.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s great. During the winter, when it’s freezing outside, you run out of places to go. They need to get out of the house, but when it’s 30 degrees, you can only hang at a playground for so long.”

“Gotcha. What do you think kids in the north do?”

“I don’t much care. But, I’m assuming they have snow suits and shit and are a bit more equipped for freezing temperatures. Seeing as we live in the South, we’re not quite as adept at working the monkey bars with gloves on. Anyway, I digress.”

“Yes, my apologies. You were saying.”

“Anyway, we’re at the mall and we go to the escalator. They love riding the escalator.”

“Sounds terrifying.”

“It is. It’s kind of ridiculous, but all you do is envision that horror we all share where something gets caught in the teeth of that thing.”

“Completely. I’m still careful with that final dismount step.”

“Exactly. Anyway, we get to the escalator and there’s three people ahead of us so we file into a quasi line. Then, the lady ahead of us stops and starts backing up. So, I have to shuffle the kids backwards so that this lady doesn’t step on them. Her husband, who was ahead of her, steps out of line and grabs her hand. He then starts telling her, ‘It’s OK, dear. I’ll hold your hand.’.”

“Wait. So, she didn’t get on the escalator?”

“No. She stopped just before she got on and her husband started consoling her. But, she also didn’t get out of the way. So, we’re standing there waiting for her to proceed down the thing. The husband starts to lead her on but she backs up again and starts waving her hands and making this, ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ sound. The husband looks at me and says, ‘She’s got a fear of escalators’. He said it like it was a normal thing. Like, there was a bee around her head and he was explaining that she was highly allergic.”

“Where in the hell are you? What kind of mall is this?”

“A nice one, in a nice area. So, the kids and I are watching this lady have a minor panic attack about riding the escalator. It’s kind of amusing, but also annoying. I just want to get by and go down the thing, but she continues to block the lane.”

“And the husband doesn’t escort her to the side or anything?”

“No, he’s just holding her hand telling her ‘It’s OK,’ and ‘You’re doing great’. It’s insane. I’m wondering what ‘not great’ would look like. Anyway, eventually the husband notices the scene and moves her to the side so we can get by. But, as we start to go, my son begins to freak out.”

“It was contagious?”

“Apparently. This kid has never flinched at doing this before. But, now he’s freaked out from watching this lady lose her shit.”

“So, he won’t get on it now either?”

“No. To him, it was like watching the big kids come off a roller coaster crying. He’s thinking, ‘There’s no way I’m doing this if it was too much for that adult’.”

“So what happened?”

“I became the dumb ass holding his hand telling him ‘It’s OK’. But, it wasn’t. By this point, people are annoyed so we step aside. Now you’ve got me with my crying son and the older lady hyperventilating next to us. It was quite the scene. By this point, I was pissed so we just left and walked down to the elevator. Thankfully, he was able to stomach that.”

“Wow. Quite the story.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t end there. A while later, as we’re leaving, we pass that same couple. She sees us, smiles, and says, ‘That thing can be tricky, can’t it. Y’all have a nice day’.”

“Well, that was sweet of her.”

“Yeah, real sweet. First, my son doesn’t know what ‘tricky’ means. Second, she instilled a new fear in him over something he was perfectly OK with. I told her, ‘Thanks a lot.’ She thought I was just responding but I was actually being a dick.”

“You showed her. I am curious about her fear though. Like, what event caused this condition.”

“I don’t want to know. I wonder whether this was a test run? Like, were they there just for her to face the escalator? Because if not, they had to know they would encounter one. If you think about it, where else do you see an elevator? They knew this was an eventuality of that day’s events.”

“Sounds like a good time all around.”

“Yeah, it was a fucking blast.”