One of the women and I went to a store because we needed a few ingredients for a meal. We walked in and saw the the store itself was below street level. There was a rickety scaffold with fabric slings/shelves between them, just below the two doorways. On the wall to the right, there were many boards nailed to the wall, maybe an inch deep and about 6 or 8 feet long. There were a few shorter ones ranged between them, and some products and other items propped here and there. The doorway was too high to jump down, and the woman I was with managed to maneuver her way down with handholds on the wall. I had no idea how to do that, and was scared and shaking. She and the two storekeepers were laughing at me because I was too stupid to get down. One of them said I was welcome to jump onto the couch, if I didn't mind the tall spike on the back of it - it was a tall, thin piece of metal, and being impaled on it wasn't my idea of fun. But it got me to look at the couch, which was heavy and obviously not going anywhere, and I edged out to sit on one of the fabric slings, and then the edge of the scaffolding. I lowered myself as much as I could, and leapt to the back of the couch, and from there onto a lovely red upholstered chair. They all stared at me as I stepped calmly down to the floor. The man said "But is there a way to get back up so easily?" I said "No, but I can give you some advice about getting back up." and started describing a climbing wall made with chunks of wood.

As we were leaving, through another door at floor level, I realized I'd taken my shoes off at the door, out of respect, and that I needed to get back up to them. I went to the shelving wall and used the shelves as handholds, bracing my back against the scaffolding, until I could grab my shoes. I came back down and picked some food items off the shelves - a package of rice noodles and a few other things. I looked down and saw Benjamin at my feet. He's a stuffed dog that I've had since I was 7, and that my mom had before me, since she was 7. He's pretty threadbare. I remembered that I'd left him here on the last trip and had asked the woman I was staying with to get him from the store and keep him safe. I picked him up and took him with me.