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Stairs: Here for It, #355

R. Eric Thomas

18 Jan 2026 • 7 min read

Hi! It's R. Eric Thomas. From the internet?
Hi!

The elevators to my gym are broken which feels like some sort of test. Everything in life is a psychological experiment if you think about it long enough. The elevators are like, "Oh, I thought we were talking about 'new year, new me'. I thought 2026 was the year of Body Tea. I thought we were investigating what the doctor meant by 'cardiovascular health'. Oh. Guess not!" And I plead with the elevator, "The gym is on the 8th floor! I cannot walk that far and then go to a HIIT. Who do I look like, Hugh Jackman?! I am a small child who has lived a sedentary lifestyle for over 40 years, you have to be nice to me!"

When I arrived this morning for my hot yoga class, I found upwards of 30 people crowded into the vestibule, all anxiously waiting, running shorts under puffy coats, water bottles clutched like life rafts.

My gym is above a parking garage, and their elevators have been on the sick-and-shut-in list on-and-off for a month. There were murmurings of a group of people venturing off to find the stairs. "Don't do it!" I cried from the back, "we have to stay together to survive!" The thing about this building is that you can walk all the way up to the 7th floor, but you actually can't get to the 8th without a key. "You'll be trapped up there," I pleaded with them. A great wail went up. People started to burn their yoga mats for warmth.

Five minutes late for pilates reformer and we all become characters in a disaster movie. Finally, one elevator arrived. "Will the life boats be seated according to class?!" I called. "Specifically, the class that I am about to miss?" The eight people closest to the elevator pushed into it and it closed, leaving us behind to form a new civilization of vestibulians.

A couple people were on the phone calling for help, which is hilarious to me because we were literally on the ground next to an open door. We could literally just leave. What were they going to do up at the gym, send down those TRX bands for us to climb up, Rapunzel-style? A person turned to me, scandalized and horrified. She said, "I asked them to send someone down to rescue us and they said 'no!'" L. O. L. Give that employee a raise. What were they supposed to come down here in steerage with us mole people? Save yourself, babe!

Apparently the scandalized person had been misinformed, however, because the next time the elevator came down a slightly harried-looking employee popped out, holding business in front of him to ward off attacks from those of us who had already gone feral.

The business cards had the name of the person we could email to keep from being charged for being late to a class (some classes, like hot yoga and pilates, are in really high demand, so if you cancel too late or miss the class, they charge you $35, which is deranged and highly motivating.)

I grabbed a card and considered, briefly, that this was my get-out-of-health free card. I hadn't really felt like going to hot yoga this morning. I absolutely love my gym and I like hot yoga, or as I call it, becoming soup. But I was feeling sluggish and lazy and wanted to go help Elsbeth solve cases for a few hours. I could just turn around, skip the class then email this Gerald person later on and say that the elevator crisis kept me from getting there. It was the perfect crime. Even Elsbeth would be stumped.

But then the employee announced that he was taking people up the stairs--he'd brought the key for the final boss level. Anyone who wanted to could come with him. This, too, felt like a test. A bunch of people followed him up, like 20, and it felt like that scene in a disaster movie where the group splits in two because of a fundamental disagreement about the way that they see the world. In this case, however, the fundamental disagreement was "the noise that my knees make." Anyway, the Stairs People took off on their expedition and I never saw them again.

Their exodus, however, meant that now I was next in line for the elevator. I had no excuse and would've had to push through a bunch of other vestibulians if I wanted to make my escape. Curse you, Elsbeth! Foiled again!

In the end, I made it to my hot yoga class, which was holding the start time to allow time for vestibulians to arrive. I became soup. It felt amazing. And I walked down the stairs to exit. Can't wait to do it all again tomorrow!