FRANCES WHITING
“I could put a live bear on the bottom step and nobody in my family would notice”
Quite often, for reasons which remain a mystery to me, people ask for my advice. Sometimes, they even write to me, care of this magazine, asking if they should leave their spouse, or end a friendship, and I mostly don’t answer those questions like the coward I am.
Or if someone asks me in person, I’ll say, “I think you know the answer yourself, don’t you?” and give a little smile and an almost imperceptible shake of my head.
This achieves three things: One, it makes me look wise; two, it gives them a little bit of encouragement; and three, it makes it appear that I too know the answer, which I don’t. I don’t know why people come to me for advice, because quite frankly I am a bit of a dreamer, my head is most often in a book, and I’m astounded anyone lets me operate any sort of machinery.
Nevertheless, the fact is people do come to me for counsel, despite my general reluctance to give it.
However, I am going to give some advice today, and that is, if you are considering building, or moving into a new home, do not make/buy/rent one with stairs.
This is because if you do, you will spend your life putting things on them for sure if there is a name for this phenomenon, I only know that it is real. It doesn’t matter what I put on our stairs – it could be shoes, or a basket of laundry or some books, it makes no difference because whatever I put there is instantly rendered invisible. I could put a live bear on the bottom step and nobody in my family would notice.
Or if they did notice, they would decide to ignore it. Sometimes, they just step around it. I have seen members of my family begin their ascent up our stairs, register whatever it is I’ve put there, and think “Oh mum’s put an empty bin here, probably for someone to take upstairs and put back in the bathroom, but I’m not going to do that. No, I’m going to walk right past it, maybe I’ll give it a bit of a kick on the way up just for fun.”
Sometimes, I like to play a little game. I like to put something on the stairs and see how many days it just sits there, while my entire family passes it by several times a day, and in both directions.
Look, thrills are hard to come by in suburbia, you take what you can get. Anyway, whole weeks can go by this way, while the object on the stair gathers dust and the game ends in one of two ways.
Either I stand at the bottom of the stairs with the item in my hand and shout at everyone about how long it has been sitting there, how ridiculous it is that not one of them has thought to pick it up and how they will not be able to behave like this in the real world, and how I am not their personal valet.
Or, I just pick it up myself because they have broken me. So if you are thinking of building a home, and putting any sort of teenager in it, may I suggest a lovely bungalow.
You’re welcome.