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Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Attack of the USF Elevator
While children are starving in poverty all over the world and the victims of one of the worst natural disasters ever struggle to get their lives back together, I have this heart-wrenching saga of my latest near-death experience:
So I was at the USF library to catch up on some reading and I decided to treat myself with a $17 cup of Starbuck's coffee. I found myself a cozy little corner by a window on the fourth floor and began to read an article. It was then that I remembered earlier in the day my professor had e-mailed everyone study questions about the articles. I cursed myself for not printing them out at home, packed up my belongings, and headed back down to the first floor computer lab. Printouts are eleven cents per page. Usually people pay with the cash stored on their student ID card, but I asked the attendant if they took cash. Naturally they didn’t so I proceeded to put exactly eleven cents on my card so I could turn around and print something. Well, the document ended up being three pages so I said “screw it” and proceeded to head back to the elevator. Ah, an elevator door was still open as if it were waiting for me. I picked up my pace and headed toward the elevator only to realize that it was about to close. As it was closing I extended my arm in order to stop the door from closing. At the end of said arm was my hand which was holding that cup of Starbuck’s coffee that I had purchased earlier. Quite to my surprise the doors did not reopen upon closing in on my coffee-dependent arm. I stood there for a moment and realized that I was holding a cup of coffee inside the elevator but the rest of my body was still in the lobby. Instead of freaking out I did the next logical thing and turned the coffee cup sideways in order to dislodge my hand, seemingly unaware of the consequence. It was split-second decision I had to make: loose the $17 cup of coffee or free my arm from a 1970’s-era elevator that lacked the necessary “don’t close on human body parts” safety feature that we all rely on to catch a last-second ride in a departing elevator. I made it back to my comfortable corner on the fourth floor and finished my reading. Surprisingly, the elevator attack was the highlight of my day and something that I can look back on and laugh about.
The moral of the story: just because elevator doors open for people's body parts in the movies doesn't mean that all steel jaws of death have the same respect for your extremities.
Posted by Will at September 27, 2005 11:52 PM in Graduate School