Are Escalators Trying to Eat You?

And other answers to unsolicited questions.

“This morning I found a snail on my driveway. What should I do?” — Driveway Danielle

If we’ve learned anything from Nature the last couple of days, it’s that we ought to leave it the hell alone. Your kid falls into a gorilla cage at the zoo? That’s the gorilla’s kid now. Good luck at gorilla school, kid. Find a shivering bison calf on the road? Don’t put it in your SUV and bring it to a ranger station. The whole middle part of our country used to just be bison, bison, bison. They didn’t need a lift to any ranger station. They don’t need our help all that much. Except they need our help staying the hell away from them.

We’ve generally screwed up Nature pretty badly over the last few centuries. In the span of about a hundred and fifty years, we’ve made this planet uninhabitable. Noted smart guy Stephen Hawking says get a new planet. Imagine what we will do to the next one.

I am the kind of guy who tries to trap roaches in containers and set them free outside my apartment. Not because I am so concerned with the lives of roaches; I am sure they have rich inner lives and all. Like that charming roach in the Kafka story. He was a big roach in that story, but I’ve seen bigger. But most of the time, I will take the time to trap and release roaches or bugs I find around the apartment. I do not like to kill, but if I do kill an animal I prefer to eat it. Fish and clams, mostly. If I was ever able to catch a bear, moose or deer, I would definitely eat them. Bison, I’d eat that. Eagle, sure. But roaches or mice, no.

Killing roaches and mice is messy business. If God wanted us to kill roaches, why are they so gross to step on? Their eggs get on your shoe and probably into your foot and just live there forever silently. Until one day, something.

Your snail situation is a toughie. Although snails are apparently delicious, I wouldn’t eat American snails. They’re probably not ripe yet. I just looked into my copy of the Joy of Cooking and cooking snails is a real pain in the ass. And cooking only one snail hardly seems worth it. Can you stay with a friend, for a while, until this whole snail thing blows over? That seems like the best bet. I’m sure if you touch the snail the snail will smell like humans and will be rejected by other snails. And snails are slow as hell, you might be living on your friends’ couch for a few weeks. You can go back and check on the path of the snail every night, and then move back into your place whenever it seems like the coast is clear. The snail will probably get bored of your driveway after a while, unless it is a really great driveway.

“Escalators freak me out. I just don’t know how to ride them and I’m always afraid of being sucked under. What is the correct way to ride an escalator?” — Escalator Eddie

Getting sucked underneath inside escalators is a big problem. Why do you think half of the escalators in Manhattan are constantly being repaired? Because people guts get stuck in all the gears. I fear getting sucked into escalators every time I ride them. That is part of the fun. Will I be sacrificed to the great escalator god or not? No one knows until the ride is over.

And I have some real favorite escalators. The wooden one in Macy’s at 34th St. That one’s almost as fun as riding the Cyclone at Coney Island. Because it is old and rickety and could potentially break apart at any moment. I also like the escalators in Washington, D.C. that go insanely far down into the center of the universe. I know D.C. was built on a swamp, but how the hell far down do you have to go into that swamp to get a subway ride? Apparently miles. I am always afraid I am going to fall down the escalators there because they are steep and endless. Falling down the stairs sucks. I do this around once a year, because I am clumsy. And often drunk. But falling down escalators is a million times worse because the stairs are moving, made of sharp metal pieces, and you will no doubt be eaten by the thing afterwards. Just out of sheer spite. Just right into the gullet of the human-eating stair machine.

There are two invisible lanes on an escalator. On one lane are the people riding correctly. They are holding onto the escalator bannister, slowly ascending or descending. They are one empty set of moving stairs away from the person in front of them. They are not jumping, screaming. They are just standing still, enjoying being lifted up or deposited down. They are not getting their shoelaces tangled inside of the device. People with small children should just take the elevator.

The other lane on escalators should only be used in emergencies. It is the fast lane, for people who are very late and need to jog up the escalator steps as it rises. They are about to miss a train, for example. Or catch up to someone they want to propose marriage to before they join the Marines. Let them go, pay them no mind, many of them will be eaten. If you really want to work out you should jog up the regular stairs like a maniac. Jogging up 15 stairs as the escalator rises is not, in the grand scheme of things, going to make a damned bit of difference to your life in any way. We’d all be better off just enjoying the ride, missing trains, never getting married. Just rising and falling like a fig leaf in the rain.

“I am a professional writer and I have no idea when it’s appropriate to use a comma. I think twitter has, like, wrecked my mind. Can you help?” — Grammar-challenged Gary

I come from Massachusetts. In Massachusetts, they put up Yield signs practically everywhere. There are rotaries all over the place for some reason. And I guess they were just kind of hoping we would figure it out on our own. But no one yields, everyone is always driving like a maniac. It’s hopeless. Writing is like this now. And we’re probably better off for it. Just write, write, write. And let the copy editors from The New Yorker fix everything. Editors are wonderful people, they love grammar so much. They have arguments between themselves about dashes and hyphens. For all I know you’re supposed to put commas between words. In Ben Franklin’s day he used to spell words differently within the same letter. Who cares about commas when escalators are trying to kill us?

Jim Behrle lives in Jersey City, NJ and works in a bookstore.