TheBanyanTree: The Frito

[Dale M. Parish]

It was an ordinary Frito-- I had first noticed it several months ago
climbing the stairs one morning.  It was lying on the fourth step up between
the seventh and eighth floors, just on the edge of the step at what I call
the "abyss" end of the step, over which anything falling could fall all the
way to the ground floor if it's trajectory didn't deviate more than the 10
cm between the other stair railing.  It was an "S" shaped Frito and was
lying "face down," so that it contacted the concrete of the steps in two
places.  It was ignored for the first few weeks as just part of the dirt and
detritus that people who have no pride throw down for others to encounter
when they think no one will see them.  

 

A few weeks after I first noticed it lying there, I noticed what I thought
at first was its shadow, but then decided that it was the grease from the
Frito staining the concrete step.  It got to be a challenge each morning to
be sure that I didn't miss checking on the Frito -- get distracted by some
other wrapper, rubber band or other item discarded by someone using the
stairs.  

 

I began to develop theories about how the Frito got there.  There is a snack
machine on the ground floor that dispenses potato chips, Cheetos, Fritos and
the like. My speculation is that it came from that machine, but there is
where I deviate from reasoning.  I would never buy a bag of Fritos and eat
them on the way up-- I'd be too out of breath by the fourth or fifth floor
to enjoy them.  When I go to the Subway across the street for lunch, I
always take the elevator back up to eat if I don't eat at Subway.  If I go
to the sandwich shop a couple of blocks away, I usually walk the stairs back
up.  But there could be someone else who either doesn't get as out of breath
as me by eight floors to eat snacks on the way up, or someone who bought the
Fritos to eat on the way down later.

 

This model doesn't' fit my framework.  When I walk down the stairs, I might
be reading, but I wouldn't want to be eating.  So was the Frito dropped
going up or down?

 

When I go up, I travel the right side of the stairs-- the outside of the
well-- and use my right hand on the handrail.  The members of "The Stairwell
To Hell" club that I've encountered there all seem to use their right hand
on the stair well also,  That would put the Frito discarder going down if
the Frito didn't traverse the whole width of the stairs to get over on the
'abyss' side.  Were the discarder coming down, would he or she be more
likely to have noticed they dropped it?  Would they care?  Apparently not.
But then, I wonder if they noticed it their next traverse of the stairs and
wondered if it was theirs or not.  

 

For months, I watched the grease spot under the Frito spread, no longer
being mistaken for a shadow, but now an unmistakable stain that extended out
a centimeter or more around the source.  I wondered how much larger it would
get before all the grease in the Frito had slowly been absorbed by the
concrete step on which it rested.  Each morning, I devised in my mind
experiments to measure the amount of grease in a Frito, what would be the
structural changes of the Frito after all the grease that helped bind it
together had been removed, whether I should measure and compare the grease
by volume or weight, what the effect on the concrete was.  How much does the
coefficient of surface friction of the concrete step change with the
adsorption of the grease?  Would the safety people really care until someone
slipped on the stairs and everyone blamed building maintenance for not
cleaning the stairs regularly?  They cleaned them once last year.  How much
further into this year will it have to be before they clean them again?  

 

Then, the other morning, it was gone.  I assumed as I approached the ninth
floor that I'd just missed it, but when I came back up at lunch, there was
no mistake-only the greasy stain remained.  The stairs hadn't been cleaned,
but the Frito was no longer there.

The next week, I carefully scanned each step on the way up for the Frito or
crumbs-had someone stepped on it, there should be crumbs.  I found none.
Had it been brushed off the abyss, it should have hit a stair railing below
and either bounced over onto the wall end of the stairs or back into the
abyss.  I didn't think something as light as the Frito would be
aerodynamically stable enough to not drift laterally-it would have to
'flutter' down, and should be no more than a few flights below.  But I found
no trace of it.  

 

Now, I have no reason not to call building maintenance and ask for the
stairs to be cleaned again.

 

 

 

 

--

Dale M. Parish

628 Parish Rd

Orange TX 77632              http://parishdm.home.att.net