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Liberation | Mar 20 2002

Two narrow strips of tile are missing from the edge of the second floor landing. These strips have been missing since I moved here twenty months ago and were probably missing long before that. It’s obvious what happened: the repeated impact of shoes on tile jarred the tiles loose, for they were vulnerable there, with nothing to brace them on the “stairs” side of the landing.

Well, actually, one tile remains, although it’s missing a corner and is no longer secured to the floor. Sometimes I find this in its former position at the lip of the landing, but more often it’s at the back of the top stair, having been knocked from its perch. Evidently someone in the building unthinkingly believes that it should go where it once belonged, and keeps moving it back.

Each time I pass the landing, I notice the tile and think something like, “There’s that fucking tile again.” Assuming I pass the landing four times a day, I’ve now seen it 2,400 times. Surprisingly, perhaps, I’ve never considered doing anything about it, despite the fact that it’s no longer serves a purpose and might even pose a danger. Yes, it probably does pose a danger, particularly to people who imagine, not having seen it 2,400 times, that it’s glued to the landing.

Coming up the stairs this morning, I suddenly realized the solution that I could simply throw the damn thing away. What liberation! It was like the moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy discovers that she can get back to Kansas by merely clicking her ruby slippers a few times – ruby slippers she’s been wearing since that fabulous early scene with the Munchins, after she lands on top of the Wicked Witch of the East and Good Witch Glenda appears and starts talking up Oz.

Or maybe it wasn’t so much like all that, because after all, how was Dorothy supposed to know the bit about the ruby slippers, whereas I’m obviously a loser for needing to see a thing 2,400 times before realizing where it belongs.