Signs and Wonderment

I visited an acquaintance in their office not that long ago. Now that I’m retired, I enjoy visiting people who aren’t, probably for the same reason people used to visit me when I worked.

They work in a very nice and relatively new building (that is, less than twenty years old) with that pressure-blasted formed concrete exterior taggers see as a challenge and a taunt while folks my age see it as a 'nice' building.

You can park in his company's lot just around the corner from the building and hardly ever step in any dog poop on the sidewalk, which is especially nice if you're barefoot (I wasn't but it’s the thought that counts) and rarely encounter any homeless people, or as I've heard them called, 'urban indigents.' I wonder if homeless people were all perfectly attired and impeccably coiffed would we call them urbane indigent?

From the sidewalk to the main entrance it's nine thick, high steps--when you have bad knees and killer math skills like I do, you notice this stuff. The normal height of a step into a public building is seven inches, trust me on this, and at least in homes, for interior stairways, it's more like six inches and has been for the last fifty years or so (it was closer to five inches when our parents were our age, but all those vitamins and the fluoride in the water have made us taller and a lot of changes in our environment have been made to accommodate the new 21^st Century Human).

As for width, or depth from the base of the next step to the ledge on the one you're on, about seven inches is average. The steps in this building were closer to twelve inches tall and at last fourteen inches deep--the kind of steps that tempt you to try, neither gracefully nor successfully, to take them two at a time. Instead, you walk like a toddler, always almost teetering and tottering but never quite falling over. Not an arduous Everest-like ascent but not pleasant either.

At the top, two signs flank the two glass doors that open out onto a relatively short landing (which, I assume, if you have packages in your arms as you're exiting could help you tumble down the nine stairs) and the signs note "No Handicap Access" in white letters with a little pictogram of a person in a wheelchair.

I know there are mandates, municipal, state, and federal for these signs. I paused longer than the person in charge of putting them up, I suspect, trying to envision what someone whose mobility was challenged would make of them at the top of the stairs rather than at the bottom. Just checking the box, I guess.

The cherry on top that made my visit a perfect parfait was, as you make the right coming out of the parking lot, and then a sudden left to get back into the flow of traffic, that someone had thoughtfully placed an overly large 'Dead End' sign on the brick wall at the end of the cul-de-sac removing any doubt that I was headed in other than the wrong direction. I was grateful they hadn’t gotten a deal on a large Stop sign instead or I might still be there. 
-bill kenny