Melvin Reichler

The Mysterious Man with the Ladder Melvin Reichler

The Man with the Ladder liked to sit on the very top and listen to the world. Perched on it he would attract the most unusual of people and adventures and he often kept passerbys spellbound with tales about the strange things that had happened to him. But as usual, a strange thing happened to him. People began to tell stories about him. He would hear these stories second or third hand, and if he found them interesting he would tell those stories too; pretty soon what happened to him, and what happened to the Man with the Ladder in stories that people told became confused. He became so synonymous with the character in his stories that even in his own mind, he became that character. In this way, this ordinary man with a slightly out of the ordinary life, inherited a history bizarre in even the most mundane of details. The Man with the Ladder found there were great advantages to being a fictional character. Not only did people believe almost everything he told them about himself no matter how strange or unlikely, he himself could remember having done things that would be quite impossible for most inhabitants of the nonfictional world. Very often he would set about doing some unusual feat he remembered doing in the past and to everyone's amazement but his own, actually accomplish it. In this way even the everyday world surrounding the Man with the Ladder seemed ripe with unheard of possibilities and endless potential for adventure. With this in mind, I would like to welcome you into the world of the Man with the Ladder.