Fun and Games

"If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good."
-Dr. Seuss

I used to take weekly trips to town with Mater, and we would do shopping and browsing and walking together in the city centre. Most of the stores, and the car parks, had multiple levels and offered the option of stairs or the elevator.
For as long as I can remember I have chosen the stairs, while Mater consistently preferred to step into that tiny, creaking, most unsettling metallic cabinet, and be propelled upward or downward.
Out of the fact that I never liked to use the elevator, we gradually made a game which lasts until this very day.
I would hover, following the unspoken rules- waiting for Mater's word, standing beside but not touching the stairs until the elevator doors had closed and obscured a smiling Mater from view; then I would leap forth and challenge myself to reach our destination floor before she did.
I always won the race, hurtling down the stairs just as fast as I could, landing on the final step as the elevator doors slid open and Mater squeezed out from between baby carriages and shopping carts and people who were not playing any games at all. Or, I would find myself waiting a long age for Mater, well ahead of time, laughing to myself, feigning boredom and impatience, drawing worried looks from other shoppers as I waited all alone bedecked with a triumphant grin.
Anyhow, I always won, which is quite the most essential thing to record, and Mater was perpetually astonished at my ability to undermine technology. I suspect, now I have the advantage of hindsight, that she was not so competitive as I thought, but was just glad I kept myself mobile and moving, and found an energetic way to amuse myself in an otherwise dull situation.