Running The Stairs

If you wonder about the sanity of modern man, wonder no more. The human race is in a steady decline and has been for many years. Consider this example; some forty years ago your average schoolchild would be required during gym class to run the stairs as punishment for any number of infractions, like flooding the showers by clogging the drain with paper towels, sneaking a peek at the other gender’s locker room or eating the gym teachers cheetos. Today the masochists we know as fitness buffs run the stairs for giggles. At Red Rocks amphitheater just west of Denver these exercise nuts can be seen not just running the stairs but hopping up them, doing inverted pushups, ascending them sideways and generally clambering about every irregular surface in every possible apelike manner. And they do it again and again. Mankind, like the  lion, was meant to work hard for a meal, fight to keep eat and then lay around fat and sovereign-like watching the football games and snoring. Rue the days we became a population of gerbils intent on busywork at all costs. This editor won’t be running any dang stairs unless they catch him in the girls locker room again. (It wasn’t worth it the first time, the place was empty save the girls gym teacher and in those days they had baseball bats planed flat with holes drilled in them as and added deterrent.)