the elevator

We have a scary elevator in my building. It is often being worked on, which I find alarming. I wonder what it did this or that time to warrant a rebuke. Frequently there is just a long yellow piece of cautionary tape strung across the doors, warning you not even to think about getting in, because you don't know what will happen if you do. Remember that episode of LA Law, the one where the disliked female lawyer made to step into the elevator, stepped into open space, and crashed to her death? This is that kind of elevator. It's temperamental; sometimes it decides to come down when you call it, sometimes it doesn't. If it does come, it may or may not obey you once you're inside and the door is closed. Sometimes you just sit there.

So anyway, I tend not to use it that much, unless I'm really in a hurry. Which I was the other day. So I stepped inside; the doors shut, and the elevator lurched and plunged. I thought, Oh shit--I'm dead.

Fortunately I did not crash to the bottom of the basement (obviously). Instead the elevator caught itself and I just stuck there, three feet lower than level, with the doors jammed shut. After ringing all the requisite buttons and banging for help on the doors, I pried doors apart about three inches--not enough to get out.

There were two students, female, standing out there, just looking at me.

I couldn't believe they were just watching this whole thing with this complete sense of detached interest. They knew I was in there; they could hear me ringing the panic button (which, inexplicably, does not apparently ring in to someone who might be able to help) and banging away. And yet they just stood there, watching.

"Can you GET ME SOME HELP?" I asked them--yes, I confess it--a bit rudely. (Can you blame me?)

And they still just stood there.

I asked them again, louder. Then I told them in no uncertain terms to go upstairs, get the secretary, and have him call for someone to get me out.

One of the girls turned around and just left. This still stuns me!

The other, bless her slow soul, finally went upstairs and tried to find someone who would listen to her. I found her there a few minutes later when the doors suddenly released and freed me. She had a trail of helpful professors who had similarly had this experience tailing along behind her. I'm not sure what any of them could have done, but it's nice to know that not all SDSU inhabitants will run away rather than lose five minutes helping someone.

Needless to say, I'm back to taking the stairs. I figure it's better on my thighs, anyway.