Red Steps and Hometown Flight:

The Original Red Step

In the middle of the staircase leading to the cafeteria in my old Munger Elementary School, there was a single Red Step.  And everyone--and I mean kindergarteners to sixth graders to PTA moms--knew not to step on the Red Step.  The Red Step was bad luck, though what kind of bad luck, no one could ever really say.  If we saw some poor sucker so much graze his Nike against the worn red stripe of cement, we'd make such a riot that the kid would avoid the cafeteria for a week.  But sometimes, on a bathroom break when everyone else was in class and the halls were quiet, I'd check over my shoulder, take a jump, and land with both feet smack in the middle of the Red Step, daring whatever luck fate might dish out.   

The superstition of the Red Step is as bogus as the Myth of Hometown Flight.  These days, mass culture is crammed with subtle (and not so subtle) hints that big city people are the successful and interesting ones, while the kids who send their own kids to their alma mater elementary schools are the losers at ten year reunions.  But, as big as New York and Chicago are, they can't fit everybody.  Some good, creative people must stay in towns with streets named after their grandparents--that is the only way to make those places better.  Maybe its a bit more unique to be one of 1,763 on a welcome sign than one of 8.1 million in New York.  It may not be glamorous, but we get community and a sense of place. We get the chance to make a real difference because we know and care about the faces we pass on the street.  Just like the Red Step, we may have to take some grief for jumping with both feet forward.   But in the end, we will deliberately live a life we choose and leave a place for our grandchildren that is better than we found it.

 -Lindsy O'Brien

Executive Editor, Red Step Press

Copyright 2007 Red Step Press