You Lift Me Up... not so much...!

I've now been stuck here 25 minutes...

Where, do you ask? The airport? In traffic? A pit of quicksand, perhaps? Nothing so dramatic, I'm afraid.

I'm sitting on the floor of the elevator at work waiting for the technicians to get the doors unstuck. Yes, I'm languishing in the elevator.

I'm not even perilously stuck between two floors! This morning at 9:30am I walked into the House Left Elevator, laden with laptop bag, purse, mail and other sundries, and hit the button for the third floor. Yet, there was no reassuring whir of the conveyance waiting to take me above... just the awful-sounding grate of a mechanical failure keeping the inner doors from shutting completely. The blank, unlit buttons only mocked my frustration as I attempted to get the outer doors to reopen. They are well and truly stuck.

After trying everything within my power to get them open or the elevator moving, I decided it was time to get someone to come to my aid. I knew there were at least two co-workers in the lobby. Do I try to get their attention with the alarm button? Or just use the Emergency button to call campus security? It's not really an emergency. I'm not injured. And while I'm annoyed, I'm not particularly in distress. I try the alarm button first, which sounds LOUD in the elevator. It has the piercing jangle of an old-fashioned school bell, and I think surely someone would rush over and let me know they're out there... nothing. I try again... still nothing. I try a fancy tat-too of sorts... nothing... nada. So, I pull out my cell phone. Still no need to bother security. NO SERVICE! The stupid contraption (ie: the elevator) is encased in concrete and the signal cannot penetrate the thick slab!

Defeated at my attempts to keep the problem in-house, I press the button that opens the phone line to the security office and someone responds at last! And then I also finally hear the custodial staff outside the elevator asking what happened. I first tell my tale to the officer who dispatches someone to the building, meanwhile word had finally gotten out around the office that I am stuck and Facilities and the elevator repair company are also called.

So, I stand for awhile longer, thinking that since it's just the doors they should be able to reset them pretty easily -- and for a moment that would seem to be so. They start to move, but then disappointingly stick at the same place. I decide I might be here for more than a few moments and sit -- and eventually pull out my notebook to start recording my thoughts.

For a few moments I ponder the meaning of life... is life like an elevator and am I stuck in between the floors of Heaven and Hell? Is the elevator some sort of Purgatory?

I briefly wonder if I can use these thoughts as fodder for a novel, but decide it's trite and quickly abandon all further pondering of the subject.

I see the bagel I bought for breakfast across the elevator. Should I eat it now? Keep it for later in case I'm imprisoned in this stupid steel cage all day? And then I realize I left my juice in the car! Rats! Now I'm thirsty and if I'm in here all day that juice is going to be nasty by five o'clock -- or whenever it is that I'm sprung from this thing!

Gradually other coworkers stop by to see if I'm okay. I assure them I'm fine, just bored. Patti manages to get a gossip magazine through the door cracks for me to read.

I start planning out my day in my new cubicle. Finish this blog post on paper to wow everyone later. Read the US Weekly. Perhaps eat a few bites of bagel. Then I wonder if getting my laptop out is worth it. I decide to hold judgement a bit to see if anyone outside gives me a time-table of my incarceration.

The doors shudder a few times and I get my hopes up, but they sound just as awful as before so I go back to writing.

I start thinking worse-case-scenario... I'm on the lobby floor, but there is a floor below me. Is there any chance it will plummet once it resets? Are there any sharp pointy things to pierce the cage at the bottom? Where's the best place to be if I find myself hurtling to the lower bowels of the building?

The door shudders again... this time the doors miraculously open and my saviours (in the form of a campus facility worker and campus security officer) step through to release me from my prison! And the angels sang!

Well, not really... but I'm really trying to salvage some drama from the situation. The only thing that was truly worrisome was that it was getting hot and stuffy in there... was I imaging feeling faint??

Probably. So I'm out. Everyone laughs and we get back to work. Meanwhile I have to schlep my laptop bag, purse mail and other sundries up the backstairs four flights to my office because they're checking on the House Right Elevator too. Panting and hot I finally collapse at my desk to post this. Whew!

Did I mention it was hot and stuffy and I felt faint?