IT'S GONNA EAT YOUUUUUUU

I work at a major one-end-of-the-mall department store (well, I say department store but the departments are almost all clothes these days). I'm usually on the second floor in the men's section, but occasionally I get called downstairs to do their jobs for them. Most of my co-workers take the lift downstairs for reasons completely unknown to me, because it's only one floor, and the lift is horribly un-air conditioned. Anyway, I take the escalator.

I got called down to do ... oh, something I don't care about and they don't pay enough for, and I had to stop short, because there was a family on the escalator. Of course, this is not a problem in itself but the fact that the oldest member of the family was hesitating before getting on the escalator WAS. It was as if he was afraid he would be sucked into the escalator and horribly mangled, like all those kids you heard about when they first installed the things in malls in the early 80s.

See, kids can get sucked into those things because they don't know how to tie their shoes. They also sit on the steps and occasionally have their trousers either too long or at their ankles. So do teenagers, come to that, but they know enough to get off the fucking thing at the top/bottom. Old people DO NOT WEAR THEIR CLOTHES LIKE THIS, and as such are in ZERO DANGER of being mauled by an escalator. 

As Douglas Adams once said, anything that exists when you're born is part of the world and the natural order of things. Anything invented between birth and 30 is new and exciting and you can probably get a career in it. And anything invented after 30 is wrong and goes against the natural order of things. I know the quote isn't quite exact, but goddammit, I can't be fucked to go look it up. I just got off work and the book's way over there. Anyway, Douglas missed one period of life (possibly because he kicked off before he got there, sadly): anything invented after you turned 50 is GOING TO KILL YOU IN THE MOST HORRIFIC WAY POSSIBLE. This made sense for current old people's grandparents, because the things invented after they were 50 were nuclear. But escalators are severely unlikely to kill anyone above the age of 3, and even less likely to kill anyone above the age of 30. You, Mister Old Scaredy Cat, need to stop being paranoid and get on the bloody thing and ride, so I can go home.