He looked forward to stepping out of professional meetings with no further obligations, stepping into the breezy — least self-critical — version of himself.  His feet would feel like wings; he could follow his whims.  This one time, the elevators weren’t functioning, and there were thirty-two stories to descend.  While others settled down in the lounge with wait-it-out drinks, he bounded down stairwell steps too narrow to land securely on.  He told himself to slow down, to see clearly each step in front of him, but he had built up a momentum he couldn’t overcome.  His hands had taken to grabbing the handrail to fling himself down a set of steps, again and again.  He was delighting in the flight of his feet, from takeoff through being airborne to the landing.  His body in its full swing came to feel it a greater danger to fight the momentum than surrender to it.  Fortunately, his fall, when it came, came not on steps but on a landing:  a twisted ankle, a sprained wrist, but no damage to the head.  He limped and hopped the remaining twenty stories of steps in pain — and yet, by the time he made it to the back of a taxi, he knew he’d do no different.  The one he trusted most to get him through the consequences of boyish whims was still the boy in him.