Stairs

I have an older sister. She is the oldest child in the family and that makes her my older sister. Coming second in a soon to be line of ten children I learned early what older sisters did. I also learned what was possible when I became the older brother. Older Sister wanted to make sure that I knew who was in charge. If I wanted to sit in a certain chair then she wanted to sit in a certain chair. If I wanted a certain cup, she wanted the cup. I realized that everything I wanted she wanted including control. I was just learning to walk and could stumble about better than most toddlers I knew. I made sure to keep my hands out to make sure that if I fell I could at least push myself back up. I was never very worried about falling. It is a part of life that I knew all too well so I might as well get used to it. The only challenge I really had was my older sister, and stairs. Being scared of sister will be explained later, this is about the stairs. The upstairs of the house was level with the front yard and the front door opened to the street about forty feet away. The downstairs of the house opened up to the backyard and had a chain link fence surrounding it. Inside the house were stairs leading from downstairs to upstairs or upstairs to downstairs depending on which way one was traveling. The stairs traveled in a straight direction from downstairs to up until it hit a landing two stairs from the top. The stairs turned ninety degrees and proceeded the last two stairs to the front room. Now I was learning how to walk and was not afraid of falling. When I had learned to use the stairs in the past I simply crawled up when I was going up or sat down when I was going down scooting my bum from stair to stair. I am pretty sure that my Mom or Dad taught me how to do all of this but I watched and that is not how they went up or down the stairs when they walked. I was walking now so I should use the stairs like they did. At the bottom of the stairs I tried to walk up but my legs were too short. I had to crawl up the stairs. I thought that maybe since I didn't have to lift my foot up at the top of the stairs to go down I would try going down first. I got to the top of the stairs, above the landing, and tried my luck. I put one foot out into the air and tried to put it on the step below. Apparently my leg was still to short or I was not used to the balance that was required to put ones leg in the air. I fell down the two steps to the landing. Although initially frightened by the fall I was not hurt in any significant way. I got up and decided to try again on the very next available stair.