Over the Top

On Friday, JG and I found ourselves on the top of the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the ones made famous by Rocky and his gray sweatsuit. No, we didn’t run all the way up the stairs; we accidentally drove across them. In a car.

It all started out very innocently with a trip to the museum. I had never been there, so JG was humoring me and two of his friends came along for the ride. We followed signs for the parking lot, winding around and around the building at what I thought was a curiously high altitude. “I feel like we’re driving on top of the museum,” I commented, and of course, the rest of the car just laughed at me. RA was worrying again, as always. Then, the scenery opened up to reveal the stairs falling down to the right and columns of the museum’s façade rising up on the left. We were on top of the stairs, staring down at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. What in the world?

The friend in the driver’s seat paused as we reached the center of the patio and said jokingly, “Do you want to take a picture?” We yelled to get off the steps and we zoomed into a less visible side parking lot. As the car pulled into place, the ridiculousness of the whole thing settled in. We were on the steps! If Rocky had been there, we could have run him over. We might even be in people’s pictures of the museum. Crazy.

JG would later describe the episode as the highlight of his weekend. At least the trip to the museum (that I loved, by the way) was worth that much, I guess.