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.
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| 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.
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| 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. |
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| 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.
