Going Down

About 5 'o clock yesterday afternoon, the power in our dorm went out, just as I had gotten onto the elevator. Right inbetween the 5th and 6th floors, as I was riding along smoothly, the whole elevator suddenly jerked violently, so hard that it actually knocked me over, and all the lights went out. Then nothing.

My first thought was thought it had fallen, but of course I realized after about 1 second that that wasn't the case. So I picked myself up and found the alarm button, which had a very light ring of light around it, and began pushing it. The sound was awful and annoying even me, so I stopped and considered what to do next.

I tried to pry the interior doors open, but they would only open about an inch and a half, but enough to let in a shaft of light from the exterior doors, and to comfort me that I wouldn't run out of oxygen if I was stuck in there for hours.

Next, of course, I tried to pry open the exterior doors, but of course they wouldn't budge, but I could hear people outside, on the 6th floor. I could discern from their talking that all the power had gone out, so I started banging on the exterior doors until I got someone's attention. It was a very nice girl from Arizona named Shannon, and she went and got a guard.

"¿Hablas español bien?" he shouts at me through the door.
"No," I reply. "Lo siento."

We all laugh. So we find a translator who says that the guard has called the elevator man to come open it up for me, but he won't be here for about 15 minutes. Fine. I can wait 15 minutes. Honestly, at this point, my greatest concern was what I was going to do if I had to go to the bathroom. I'd just eaten 7 tacos and drank a soda. Yeah, I know, gross.

In the meantime, Shannon, and gradually, more and more of her friends, come to the door to talk to me through it and keep me company while I wait. Then, from 2 floors up, my professor starts hollering down the elevator shaft at me. About 40 minutes has gone by, the elevator man has finally arrived, but they can't get onto the 6th floor from the stairwell, because the door is locked to keep the boys out, and no one has a fucking key. You've gotta be kidding me. Aside from being stupid, isn't that like, the biggest fire hazard ever? And they can't find anyone who has a key???

My professor tells me to hold tight, they're working on it. Another few minutes go by, and he yells back down at me again that the elevator man is going to be jumping on top of the elevator and it's going to rock, so don't panic. Eh?

All this time, all I can think about is the Six Feet Under episode where all the people are trapped in the elevator, and they pry the door open and start crawling out, but just as one man is crawling through the narrow little space, the electricity comes back on, the elevator starts moving again, and it chops him in half. I don't want to get chopped in half.

To make a long story short, the elevator man basically manually inches me up until I'm level with the 6th floor (well at least there will be no crawling or getting chopped in half), with some kind of contraption inside the elevator shaft that you have to have a key to use. So now I'm level with the 6th floor, but there's still the matter of no one being able to get the stairwell door open to come in and unlock the elevator doors, which is also something only the elevator man can do. Great.

Eventually, someone gets a key to the 6th floor door, and the elevator man comes and opens up the elevator, and I'm greeted by about 12 girls all standing around the elevator applauding. Suddenly I'm a hero for being stuck in an elevator for an hour.