"I mean, in the last few months alone, I've been pinned in a big set of white water rapids, been bitten by an angry snake in a jungle, had a close escape with a big mountain rockfall, narrowly avoided being eaten by a huge croc in the Australian swamps, and had to cut away from my main parachute and come down on my reserve, some 5000 above the Arctic Plateau. When did all this craziness become my world?"*

   Remember last week when I said Siri was the devil? Well, I was right and apparently she knows what I was saying about her because the very next day I got trapped in the elevator. I shouldn’t use a passive sentence structure, but it sounds weird to say “the elevator trapped me” because 1) the elevator isn’t a sentient being and 2) it was Siri that made the elevator do it: the elevator is entirely blameless in this event. (I know my logic is off here, as many don’t believe Siri is a sentient being, but she definitely has A.I., which is more than I can say for the elevator.)

   I went down to the garage to move my laundry into the dryer and then took the elevator up to the first floor to get my mail. My gay mailman gave me a friendly hello and went to work stuffing those horrible pages of useless coupons into everyone’s mailbox. I decided not to wait for mine, but took my mail from yesterday and got back into the elevator.

Look at the creepy elevator in my building.

   I pushed “2” for my floor and the door started to close. And then, just inches shy of completely closing, it stopped. I couldn’t see out. I tried to push it closed. Then I tried to pull it open. It wouldn’t move. So I started pushing every button inside the elevator (useful trick, that) and shouted to the mailman from inside, asking if he could push the outside button. He did it. I could hear him, even if I couldn’t see him. It didn’t do shit. Then I very methodically began kicking and hitting the door and pushing every button I could find and hitting the elevator alarm button over and over and over. I felt like I was dying. I could literally feel the oxygen being sucked out of the tiny room. There was a sign right next to me that said there was “little chance” of the elevator running out of oxygen. But it didn’t say there was "no chance". It was nearly 100 degrees that day, which made the elevator 175 degrees, so I started sweating and turning in circles and pushing the emergency button again and again. I considered crying, but I thought that if they found me crying, I’d probably be embarrassed. I also had to pee. It was a true emergency of the very most serious kind. What if I peed my pants in the elevator just seconds before they opened it, and then I’m standing there shrugging, going, “I thought it was going to take longer?" I would have to hold it unless day turned into night and I had to figure out a way to drink my own urine like Bear Grylls taught me to do in a life-threatening emergency.

It looks like someone was clawing at the door. It's like that scene in Silence of the Lambs where Catherine's in the well at Buffalo Bill's house and she sees all the bloody scratch marks and broken finger nails in there and freaks out.

This looks like the poster image for a horror film.**

   Hours later (it was probably about 30 seconds, total), Robert showed up outside the door and called in to me.

   “I’m going to reset the elevator, okay?”

   “Yes, oh god! Thank you, Robert! Thank you. Thank god!” I leaned my head against the door of the elevator, something I envisioned Meryl Streep would probably do in the movie version of this situation.

   “Is that you, Christine?”

   “No, it’s Lacey.”

   “Oh.”(Pause). “Lacey. Please don’t push any more buttons, okay?”

   It kind of sounded like he didn’t want to reset the elevator for me. Only for his precious Christine who most likely doesn’t call him once a week from work to ask him to check and make sure she blew out her candles or unplugged her curling iron.

   “I won’t! I promise!” I pounded every-so-slightly on the door with my fists, picturing how dramatic it probably looked.

   “Just don’t touch anything. This will probably take about 2 minutes.”

   “Thank you!” And as his footsteps faded away I said, “I love you…”

   He restarted the elevator within the next 2-4 minutes and I came out expecting the fire department and all my worried neighbors to be waiting in the lobby. But no one was there. Not even the mailman had stuck around. So I walked back to my apartment and I haven’t gotten in the elevator since.

   Siri: 1, Lacey: 0

*Bear Grylls, a man who drinks his own urine every chance he gets. 

**I shouldn't show you pictures of the elevator in my building, because it sort of reveals how crap-tastic my building is.