[JimNasium]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Funny you should mention this. I have this problem occasionally myself, except in my case it'll be while I'm halfway through a step. I'll then kind of jerk around and have to grab the handrail.

I've attributed it to my growing clumsiness as I get already. At 18, I could flow down a flight of steps like water, but as I've gotten older, I've been more likely to catch a heel or something and have to take intensive action to avoid falling. My theory is that I've lost my confidence with stairs.

As a side story, the back staircase in my house goes down to my kitchen, and it makes two 90 degree turns on the way down. The first 90 degree turn terminates in a full-size window whose bottom edge is only about 8 inches above the steps, and I have this irrational fear that at some point I'm going to miss a step, fall, and go right through that window. I would then manage to fall down a flight of stairs, crash through a window at a bad angle that would guarantee some impalement, fall another eight feet or so onto the sidewalk outside, and most likely be locked out of my house.

A couple of years back, we ended up meeting a guy who lived in our house before we bought it. (He was two owners before us, so we didn't know him.) We gave him a tour of the house, and with no prompting at all, he told me that he had fallen down that back stairway once and it was everything he could do to keep from going through that window. It didn't help my fear any.

Might I suggest a bowl of anti-freeze.