on escalators

When I was young I was afraid of escalators. I remember being on one before I developed this paranoia and seeing the teeth sink into the metal floors at the very top and the very bottom and having the sinking feeling that I could get sucked in between the floor somehow... If my shoelace got caught in it, I would get sucked in with the rest of the escalator. And I couldn't comprehend where the belt part of the escalator went when it went under those metal floors. 

So what I'm getting at is that one day after I developed this paranoia, after countless times of following my mom around at the mall and refusing to take the escalator every time, (can you imagine how annoying it must have been for my mom to go out of her way to find an elevator every single time we were trying to switch floors for her paranoid daughter?) my mom finally had it. She insisted we take the escalator. So I grabbed onto a pole and refused to budge. So my mom grabbed one of my arms and tried to pull me off. After all, how strong could a small 6 year old child be? But my elbow popped! It popped and it started swinging in this weird way, and I remember thinking that it was strange, but all my mom could do was watch it in horror for about 5 seconds before realizing that we were in a shopping mall and that people were staring. Now that I think about it, I can't imagine how horrified she must have felt at feeling like she had broken her daughter. Neither of us knew that an elbow could just be popped right back. 

Not too long after this episode, when I was still paranoid about escalators, I remember being in Las Vegas with my family. We were sauntering around MGM, looking at Siegfried and Roy's white lions, when we got on an escalator. And my shoelace was loose. So we get on this escalator and at the very top, my worst fear becomes a truth, one of my personal experiences. How horrible is it when your worst fear actually happens? Especially at such a young age, when you still have hope that it never can? So my shoelace gets caught in the teeth at the very top of the escalator. And my initial reaction isn't to scream in horror or to cry in fear. It's to stand there silently and accept my fate. I'm going to get sucked into this stupid escalator. But this guy who was standing behind me and my family calmly kneels down and yanks my shoelace out of the teeth. You wouldn't believe my gratitude. When I try to remember the first time I ever understood gratitude, I always come back to this scene in my life. It's so silly, but I honestly thought it was the end of my life. If anything, I was standing there hoping that I'd suddenly turn into water and escape this whole thing.