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the best of times

July 18, 2006

what a week! and it's only tuesday!

two landmark events have already occurred in only two days.

for one thing, i have finally learned to do a basic task that has always eluded me.

there's something i really love watching a girl do... i love seeing her grab a straw in her soft hand, her long fingers wrapping delicately around the shaft of the sippy device. she taps one end of the straw against the other hand, or the counter, or even her lightly tanned leg, and the straw pops out of the paper wrapper, where she can bite it gently or grab it with her lips and pull it out.

it's probably obvious why i love watching this so much... because i have never been able to do it.

i rarely use straws, because i tend to drink too fast with them. but they are often the only way to adequately stir sugar into an iced tea without wasting a plastic utensil. so, i have my own, decidedly less intriguing straw-opening process. first, i attempt to do it like everyone else, which has only ever succeeded in crumpling the straw while it's still safely in its flimsy paper cocoon.

next, i curse loudly, usually the "f" word, and start shredding the paper manually into lots of little bits that i then have to clean up.

i've long known the issue is one of pressure - how to hold the straw in the wrapper lightly enough to push it through the paper, but tightly enough to get some grip. and at this, i have never, ever succeeded.

but yesterday, it came to me - i brushed my fingers lightly against the outside of my plastic cup, till they glistened with dewy condensation, then grasped the straw with those fingers, and tapped...

the pride i felt when the straw burst free from the wrapper was... indescribable. i wanted to cry. and maybe, quietly, to myself, at the drink bar at schlotzsky's i did...

so that was a big landmark accomplishment, an epiphany enacted that will change my life. but in terms of an event, little could compare to what else yesterday:

yesterday morning, i fought nobly through the grogginess of minimal sleep and my hatred of monday to make it to the bus stop on time. fortunately, there is a second bus that comes a few minutes later. once on board, i exercised my newly regained ability to read in a moving vehicle. it's still a tricky operation at best, and there is still just the faintest hint of nausea. but with this superpower, i may now be able to read more than one book a year. stay tuned.

workout bag over one shoulder and cake keeper full of a botched blueberry pound cake balanced on my right hand, i stepped off the bus and into the over-cooled air of my office building's foyer, unaware of the peril that loomed ahead...

i stepped onto the elevator, joining a woman that works down the hall from me. as the doors were closing, a guy holding a giant cylindrical vase of weird flowers aloft came into view. we opened the door for him, and he slid in.

the doors closed. we started talking to the flower guy, then the elevator lurched and clunked. my copassengers didn't pay it any mind, but i was suspicious. our building has some of the fastest elevators i've ever been on, and they're very smooth, but i was pretty sure we weren't moving.

after about a minute, they were staring at the doors, too. it's interesting that when you're on an elevator that stops, there's really nothing to look at to size up the situation, so you stare at the buttons, then the doors, the floor number display, even though the only thing that matters is the lack of movement.

i was immediately thrilled - my life has been fairly lame and unremarkable in terms of things like meeting celebrities, getting arrested, and, yes, getting stuck in an elevator.

the woman from down the hall opened up the panel to the call box, and hit the emergency button. there was a dialtone, then lots of clicks, then an automated message, and then we were on hold.

eventually, a woman came on and asked what our situation was. we told her.

"OK, sir, do you see the 'door open' button?"

"uhh...yeah."

"I want you to hold the door open button for five seconds."

silence.

"ok, nothing."

"nothing happened?"

"no."

"the doors didn't open?"

clearly, she didn't trust my definition of "nothing."

"no."

"OK, sir, I want you to hit all the buttons so that they're all lit up."

i was actually sort of concerned about the operator at this point, because her suggestions seemed to be the sort of things people trapped on an elevator would do once they started panicking.

of course, nothing continued to happen, and the operator said she'd call somebody. she asked if we were alright, and we shrugged. we clearly were, but we wondered if maybe we shouldn't be.

i slid down the wall and made myself comfortable. the woman from my office put her purse on the floor and, to my amazement and only slight disappointment, was able to gracefully maneuver herself to the floor in her skirt.

we sat for maybe two minutes before she wondered exactly where the car was stuck. it occurred to me that i was so thrilled to be finally stuck on an elevator that i wasn't really doing much thinking about how to get off. i pictured the morning wearing on into afternoon. she and i would eat cake with our hands. later, needing protein and wanting to minimize the air consumption, we would kill and possibly eat the flower delivery guy, though the idea stirred slight feelings of homophobia in me.

eventually, of course, her husband would have to give up on her and move on, and she and i would have to repopulate the elevator with our own young.

clearly, my mate wasn't thinking clearly when she wondered what floor we were on. i stood up and did my best action hero impression, pulling the doors apart with my bare hands, revealing...

the security guard staring at us from the first floor, a precipitous drop of at least five inches.

we stepped down, and like lemmings, onto another elevator. we rode up, and all went our separate ways, another potential future dashed.

Posted by Rob at July 18, 2006 12:16 PM

Comments

Posted by: Karen Scott at July 18, 2006 05:14 PM

Posted by: Mike (Wiley Coyote) at July 18, 2006 10:30 PM

Posted by: mike at July 19, 2006 08:45 AM

Posted by: Ami at July 21, 2006 05:55 PM

Posted by: Jori at July 22, 2006 10:27 PM

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