ESCALTOR ANXIETY

Cappy Jack ©2002

            My sister and her family made an annual pilgrimage to her husband’s country in North Africa. They always collected many footlockers of clothes to take with them for their twenty-six nieces and nephews. I went with them to the airport to help with such a large baggage check.

            After lugging all the footlockers to the check in line, my sister asked me to take her three children up to the waiting area while she and their father dealt with the huge luggage overage. So up the escalator I went with my six-year-old nephew and the twins. They were excited and I had never had to control them in a crowd before, especially an airport with infectious bustle everywhere.

            I couldn’t hold everyone’s hand and my four-year-old nephew got away and disappeared into the ocean of travelers. Frantically I plunged into the stream of people in the direction I last saw him trailing his twin sister and the oldest boy like lead weights. Suddenly the wave of people pulled away from the escalator entrance to reveal a scene that had repulsed them and sent a chilled feeling to my toes.

            There was Karim facing the escalator handrail with his tongue pressed up against the moving licorice stick in a three-point stance between tippy toes and his tongue. His eyes were wide open and rolling in a smorgasbord of taste at three feet per second. He must have licked twenty-five feet of handrail clean before I pulled him away and through the parted waves of people to land at the seating area.

            I told Jamie that she might want to watch Karim for any signs of illness starting now. The report back was negative and even now, more than twenty years later, he enjoys a freedom from illness that suggests escalator handrail licking may be a viable inoculation for youthful immune systems.