It might be that they’re one novel thing he could both discern as a specific thing and pretty much completely understand what their purpose is once he started paying attention to them. Just about everything in a modern city is an unfamiliar thing tied to a large context of other unfamiliar things, so you’ll just zone out when you’re missing the context, but stairs and carpets are pretty much just stairs and carpets.
What was the point about the carpet rods? You seemed like you were going somewhere interesting with that!
This post is the only place on the Internet that mentions such an anecdote. Maybe it’s an AI hallucination?
It might be that they’re one novel thing he could both discern as a specific thing and pretty much completely understand what their purpose is once he started paying attention to them. Just about everything in a modern city is an unfamiliar thing tied to a large context of other unfamiliar things, so you’ll just zone out when you’re missing the context, but stairs and carpets are pretty much just stairs and carpets.