Sunday 9/29/24
The strangest thing to happen to me in the entire time I've been running stairs occurred yesterday at the Bunker Hill Monument. The Monument opens at ten and I had gotten there early. The rangers sometimes let me in before they open for the day so I can get started on running my stairs. I was hoping to make it out to a football game at Boston College that started at noon, and it was going to be tight. You had a beautiful September day. I did some push-ups on the grass of the top of the hill and then I went to wait outside the door to the mini-museum that leads to the Monument.
A steel-grate ramp leads to this door, which is on the right at the top of the ramp where there's a railing. So, if you were going to start a line, that's where you'd stand. You could also stand on the other side of the rail--that is, further from the door--but then you're really just diffusely assembling in the general area.
A family gathered on that other side. There were two men. They looked very similar and could have been twins. They were in their mid-sixties, I'd say. There was a woman around the same age, and a younger man. I didn't pay much attention to how they looked, save for the two men, because I was trying to ascertain if they were twins. In an off-hand, barely interested way. They had these pronounced foreheads--sort of like the Frankenstein monster. Not that they looked dumb. They looked bright, actually, I'd say. Alert and together.
The woman was fiddling with her phone, complaining about all of the junk mail she received but noting that something else, at least, had gone better phone or email account-wise than it had been going. As I said, I was just waiting. One of the men read the sign aloud that was on the fence forward from us, which says it's a strenuous climb of 294 stairs to the top, to be well-hydrated, that type of thing. The woman made a joke. Or it seemed like a joke to me. "So up and back and then we go straight to McDonald's?"
One of the rangers came out. They're less likely to let me in if other people see me being let in, for obvious reasons. This particular ranger is one I've known for years. We started chatting. It was very clear that we knew each and I was there all the time. I had on, too, my workout clothes, a headband. I wasn't a tourist.
Ten o'clock came, and this same ranger opened the door. When the weather is nice and to get a breeze going given that there's no air conditioning in the mini-museum and it can get stuffy, the keep this front door open, which is done by putting a loop of rope over the knob and then attaching the other end of the rope to one of the fence spikes behind the opened-out door. The ranger who is fastening the door in this manner has their back to the people waiting while they're doing it.
I never go in while the ranger is securing the door, because you'd be going behind them--which I think is vaguely threatening and inappropriate--and they haven't said you can go in. I wait until they're done and for them to tell to go ahead, or else I say, "All set?" Sounds exactly like what you'd expect from me, right?
Yesterday, before the ranger was done, the family charged from the other side of the platform, where they'd been diffusely gathered, through the door, right in front of me. The ranger, who was turning around, exchanged a look with me after they had passed, and a sort of shake of the head.
But now I had to hustle. You pass through the mini-museum to get to the Monument itself by going back outside within that area that's fenced off which you were just on the other side of. The distance between that second door of the mini-museum and the entrance to the Monument is fifteen feet or so. Could be a bit more. There's plenty of room. What I had to do, of course, is get around those people before they got to the entrance. It's not a ride at Disney. You're out in the open and when you're ready, you go into the Monument.
As I've said, there were three people in their sixties. These were not exemplars of fitness. The stairs of the Monument are narrow. If someone is behind you, they're behind you unless you step aside. So if you go ahead right in front of someone, that basically means you're leading the way, you're the pace-setter, which would be a silly thing to do--or to want to do--for what's going to be your strenuous climb up 294 stairs.
I'd say that it takes the average person ten minutes--at least--to get to the top. I do it each time in about three.
I give the woman, who was second behind one of the men, a wide berth as I went by. I'm five feet away from her. Even still, I say, "Excuse me," which was over-polite. There was no need to do this. She starts going off. "Oh my God! Hey! Hey! Hey! How dare you! Hey! Excuse me!"
This was so out of place, so out of nowhere, that it immediately creeped me out. But whatever. People are crazy, life goes on. One of the brothers is next, and with the woman still yelling out, I say, as friendly as I can muster--because I want no trouble ever, with anyone, and there's this crazy lady behind me, and I have enough to contend with every day--"Excuse me, sir." I give him the sir.
And you know what this guy does? He keeps going. Not only does he keep going, he positions himself so I can't get around either side of him as we close in on the entrance.
My mind is blown now. I've never seen anything like this. I think to myself, "Okay, chief, you go up first." Which he does, standing in the dead middle of the stairs, so there's no way at all for me to go around him. He's going to keep me behind him. Why would you want to do this as an average sixty-five-year-old man?
So I'm right behind this guy, waiting for him to fall aside because there's no way he can even walk anywhere close to all the way to the top. This guy is determined, though. He's using this weird motoric walking style and I'm wondering if he made some promise to himself to get to the top without resting as some test of his fitness or what.
I had no clue what this guy was doing. Finally, sounding like he was about to die around stair eighty, he moves aside to hold on to the ledge of one of the narrow window openings and try to get his breath.
What on earth was the point of that? I think, and on I keep going.
I get to the top, I'm coming down, and I see the son--or whatever he was--gunning up the stairs, this crazy look in his eyes, plainly looking for me. He gets up in my face, says, "What the fuck is your problem?" and tries to shove me. He puts his hands on me, right into my chest, and tries to push me into the wall.
Now I have another problem. Because, on the one hand, I can kill this guy. If I get in a fight with him, he's going to get hurt. Badly. I don't want to be arrested. That's what I'm thinking. I was also thinking, "Does this guy have a death wish?" and "What the hell is up with these insane people?"
Because again, I'd never seen anything like this. They seemed so normal outside before the door was opened. Annoying, with the woman and her grumbling, but normal. It was like this was all pre-planned. That's was the most bizarre thing. That each of them had this part of some strange ritual to carry out and were doing it after having agreed on this earlier.
I also didn't know how old this guy was. Was he twenty-six? Was he seventeen? I hadn't paid any attention to him and now we were in this tight space. The adults were in their sixties, so he was very unlikely to be that young, but I didn't know.
So the other problem was there was really nothing for me to do. You have to be out of your mind to come up to me and just shove me. Out of your mind. To do that to anyone. But I really look like one of the last people you'd want to do that to, no matter how wronged you thought you were. I think he was avenging his mother.
And it's like, my friend, your mother is a large creature I simply passed in a wide open space.
What was supposed to happen? What else could have happened? What else would you want to happen?
I could have really hurt this guy. Instead, I did nothing, because there was nothing for me to do. I keep on task. Now, part of the task, unforeseen when I first went out, was not ending up in jail.
I'm coming down, and there's the delightful mother, around stair sixty, clinging to the rail, sucking wind as if it'll be a miracle if she doesn't expire right then and there, but she manages to start yelling--or trying to--again.
"You can go around...you...you...fuck...ing...ass...hole..."
The railing is meant for people coming down. The stairs are narrow on the other side without the railing. You stay to the right each way. It's like driving. If you fall going up--when you don't have the railing--it's not a big deal. If you fall going down, it can be. That's why the railing is where it is.
So she was on the wrong side. Now there are all of these people behind her, because she's clogged up the stairwell, and I have to get past her and weave between all of them, because they're so collectively stupid that some are on the left, some are on the right, and some are on the left and some are on the right on the same stair in the narrow pass way.
Circuit 1 complete! Four more to go.
I say to myself, "Well, if you go back up, there's going to be a problem," so I decide to cut my workout short. The ranger is at the bottom back at the second door of the mini-museum that leads out to the Monument and I told him, "I just wanted to give you a heads up, but those people from before were very belligerent, and the younger guy put his hands on me."
The ranger remarked about how aggressive--that was the word he used--they were coming in and he wanted me to file an assault report. I said, "I don't want to make your job harder, I'm just letting you know in case there are any problems with anyone else. Those people are out of control."
And I left. I got about halfway across the bridge, and thought, you know, I'm not having my stair routine fouled up. I wanted to do five circuits and I was going to do five circuits. So I went back, knowing they'd be gone by then. I had to wait in line now because the maximum number of twenty people were already in the Monument. And I did the other four circuits.
That was one of the strangest things I've experienced with random people during daylight hours, and on a pleasant morning at that at a national park site. I wondered throughout the day how people get that way. It's as if this was a family that had some code that was their main thing, like "We back down from no one, we're Johnsons," or something like that.
But nothing happened. No offense was caused. They instigated and kept instigating. This was no different than if they were walking through the Public Garden and someone passed them. The rage of this guy and this woman--his mother or whatever she was--was extreme. They went from regular, mild-mannered, to savage, just like that. It was like this guy was avenging a crime against his family.
You know what it reminded me of? And I never thought anything could remind me of this. Remember that radio interview I gave on the single strangest dramatic radio program ever with that show Darkness and that episode about the family who is off on vacation, and everything is normal, they're normal, and then, wham, vampiric bloodbath! It reminded me of that.
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