Stair Tape And Skid-Socks

I’ve been accused of being a lot of things in my life, from a jerk to a misogynist to a gun-toting conservative, as well as a bleeding heart liberal, and most of those have probably been true to some extent at different times. But the one thing I have always been able to lay claim to since I was a toddler is being clumsy. My dad used to say the only safe place for me to work would be in a mattress factory, but a buddy of his pointed out that I would probably suffocate under a pile of feather mattresses in the first week. He may have been right, and just to be on the safe side, I’ve always avoided working in the sleep industry.

I have certainly not gotten any better as I have aged. Not that I’m getting feeble, I don’t crash and burn any more than I always did. It just takes me longer to recover when I do. But an incident last week really scared Miss Terry and my daughter Tiffany.

It happened Wednesday evening, Tiffany’s last day here before she flew back to Arizona. Our home is a split-level design, with the living room, kitchen, and two guest bedrooms on the upper half, and my office, the master bedroom and bath, laundry room, and Terry’s office/loom room on the lower level. Three wide oak stairs lead from my office to the upper level at one end of the house, and tiled stairs in the utility room do the same thing at the other end. The wooden stairs have always been slick, and several times we have talked about installing a rail on one side, but we never got around to doing it.

I seldom wear shoes around the house, just a pair of socks if we’re not going to be going out, and on the evening in question, I started to go upstairs from my office and my foot slid out from me on the first step. When I came down, my jaw slammed into the top step and my ribs hit the middle one. I had never been punched out by stairs before, and I don’t recommend it. I wound up with some nasty bruises and was pretty sore for a couple of days, but it could have been worse.

I talked to my neighbor Jesse Bolton, who helps us out a lot around here, and he’s going to install a rail on the stairs sometime in the next few days when his work schedule allows it. In the meantime, I mentioned that I might need to get some type of non-slip tread tape to put on the stairs, but the wood is really pretty and I didn’t look forward to having some kind of black tape on them. My son-in-law Kenny told me that they make a clear anti-slip tape for just that purpose, and Terry ordered some from Amazon.

It didn’t take her long to lay out six strips, two on each step, and get them placed where she wanted. Then she peeled off the backing, and they don’t show much at all. They definitely make the stairs much safer to navigate.

Terry also ordered me some anti-slip socks that have a special tread pattern on the bottom that also prevent slipping. They are very comfortable, and between them and the tape she put on the stairs, I may get halfway up some time and be stuck there forever. Hopefully, Terry will come by and throw me a sandwich now and then. She’s a good woman about things like that.

Thought For The Day – What does it mean when the holy water sizzles when it hits your skin?