Okay, there really weren’t mother-effen snakes on the mother-effen elevator, but it was truly a bloodcurdling experience.
I re-evaluated my life in an elevator today. Of things I’m scared of, the idea of large mechanically designed contraptions designed to ease my travel malfunctioning is one of them. My emotions were jolted. Recently, the 7am elevator experience has been “turrible.” You’re lucky to only wait five minutes and then it is propitious to stop at anything less than three floors between 15 and Lobby. There is one glass elevator that faces east- if you catch it in the morning you can bask in the sun rising over Cleveland’s skyline. However, this elevator has been out of service for months. Today was my day though, I woke up early enough to work out, listened to NPR while getting ready, had breakfast and was ready to roll! When the glass elevator opened its doors in response to my call, I was elated! My joy would soon melt into fear.
The elevator slowed to stop on the 9th floor, but it slowed a bit too much. After the lady on the 9th floor got on and the doors shut, weird things started to happen. The elevator began its descent at the pace of a snail and I mentioned to her it was acting funny before she got on. After giving me the look of “I can’t believe you just let me get on a death trap,” she pressed 6 so that we could make an early exit. While images of elevators dropping raced through my head I steadied myself by admiring the blood orange sunrise and thinking about the grand excuse it would be to call off work via trapped in a broken elevator.
As we gradually approached the 6th floor I was hopeful the saga would soon come to an end. However, we surpassed the floor and did a little dip and the lights noting the floors overhead and the buttons on the panel noting what floors we had initially pressed all went out. The glass allowed us to know where we were though and suddenly we were headed up. Finally on the 9th floor the doors opened and another resident’s hope was dashed as we both practically jumped out and looked like we had just seen our lives flash before our eyes.
