Elevator Action
Aside from it being Ryan's last evening living among us for a while, last night ended like many others. I said my goodbyes to my friends at the Clever Dunnes and got in my car to make the thirty minute drive home to my apartment on the Sammamish plateau. In the back seat was a plastic bag containing a new pair of work shoes and a bulk-pack of black socks. This bag would become both betrayer and savior.
Upon arriving home I parked my car in the secured parking garage under my apartment building and, Macy’s bag slung on my wrist with keys in hand, I unlocked the door to the secured elevator room.
This next detail is important...As you all know, in the modern elevator, there is a gap of about 4 or 5 inches between the wall of the shaft and the elevator car itself. This, presumably, allows the elevator some amount of buffer room to keep the elevator from scraping into the walls.
As it turns out, this gap serves the alternate function of swallowing my keys when I clumsily drop them due to an unforeseen shift in the weight of a Macy's bag.
I was dumbfounded; the shot was one in a million. One moment I was seconds away from the warm embrace of my waiting bed and the next I was standing thunderstruck in the elevator room trying to will the keys back into my hand with the sheer magnitude of my disbelief at the events unfolding. After several moments of cursing everything from the Macy’s bag to the theory of gravity, I took stock of my situation.
1) I am locked out of my car and my apartment
2) Its 2:30 in the morning
3) The apartment office is long closed
4)All I have at my disposal are the clothes on my back, a cell phone with one bar of battery remaining, a plastic bag containing new shoes and socks, and a fierce desire to avoid spending the night in an elevator shaft.
Things were not going well.
In a state of mild panic and utter embarrassment I called up the one person with spare keys to my apartment. Ryan groggily answered his cell phone after the second consecutive call and I hurriedly explained my situation while apologizing profusely for the late-night crisis he was now, unwittingly, involved in. As it turned out, Ryan, indeed all of my friends, were much too intoxicated to drive. With a sense of growing dread and with Ryan acting as moral support and my link to the internet, I attempted to contact a local 24 hour locksmith with very little success. The only locksmith that actually answered his phone sounded more intoxicated that any of my friends and was, therefore, very little help.
What now, I asked myself? As four am came and went I found myself holed up in the building lobby with a growing headache and the sinking realization that I may actually be spending the better part of the night there as I waited for the main office to be open. It was then that Ryan informed me via text message that he was trying to sober up and would drive my keys out to me as soon as it was remotely safe to do so. He put the ETA at a hour at the very least but, truthfully, it was more likely that it take two. I thanked him and returned to the lobby chair to sit and wait for the cavalry.
I’m not sure if it was my intense need to avoid the embarrassment of sitting in the lobby like a homeless bag-man as the rest of the building filed out for work in a few hours or if it was my deepening guilt at the prospect of Ryan getting pulled over or worse on account of my clumsiness but, something galvanized me into action.
I returned to the parking level, held the elevator door open with my foot, and peered down the gap using my cell phones’ screen to for light. There, five or six feet out of my grasp, lay my keys splayed perfectly on the floor of the shaft. They were close. maddeningly close.
I then propped open the door to the elevator room and began roaming the parking garage looking for inspiration or material. I rummaged through garbage cans, looked under cars, and briefly contemplated trying to break into a blue firebird to obtain a length of rope I saw in the back seat. After a half an hour with nothing to show for my efforts I returned to the elevator room and hung my head in frustration. It was then, while gazing at my shoes in defeat that inspiration struck me.
I quickly pulled the laces out of my shoes and tied them together to create a string capable of reaching my lost keys. From the Macy’s bag I used a plastic hook that had held my pack of socks on the rack as the grappling hook on the end of my makeshift device. I excitedly lowered the hook down the opening but several attempt to the retrieve the keys illuminated a glaring flaw in my design. Weight. The weight of the hook on the end was not substantial enough to manipulate the keys onto the hook!
I desperately searched my pockets from items to add weight to the hook and settled on a green plastic lighter and a hand full of change. I lashed the items to the end of the hook with a pair of aging rubber bands I had found on the floor of the lobby and, when I was satisfied with the new weight, returned to the gap.
I made a few more passed with little luck and, although it was much easier to manipulate the hook with the added weight, things began to look hopeless. Then, all of the sudden, the keys were on the hook. My heart actually raced as I gingerly raised the keys towards me. I could almost feel the soft triumph of my bed as I watched the keys slowly ascend on my makeshift rope. I cried out in sheer frustration as I was struck from the side and the keys slipped of the hook and back down into the darkness of the shaft. In my excitement I had taken my foot off of the elevator door and, unrestrained, it had slammed into me making me drop my precious cargo. I was furious but encouraged. I had failed but it had shown me that my plan was, in the very least, possible.
I grabbed a garbage can and blocked the door and, once again, lowered the device into the shaft. I swept it back and forth on the floor, operating blind since I had no free hand to light the darkness with my cell phone. Panic swept over me as the first few passes yielded no contact with the target and I feared that the keys may fallen out of the reach of my hook. I dragged the hook across the floor again. Nothing.
It was in the middle of a particularly desperate plea to God that I felt the hook catch. The shoelace went taught with the weight of my many keys and, again, I delicately raised the hook and its cargo towards me. I held my breath and kept one eye on the elevator door until the keys were close enough for me to reach in and grab them.
My hand closed around my elusive prize and, in that moment, I had won the super bowl, won the Indy 500, and KO’d Mike Tyson. I had won the lottery and been elected president of the universe. I jumped to my feet, held the keys above my head and let out a victory cry that I’m sure woke up most of the fist floor of my building.
The walk to my apartment door felt like a parade in my honor and when my head finally hit the pillow I had smile on my face.
Moral of the story? Thanks to gravity and five inch gap in the floor I was shown that I have one of the best men in the world as a friend and that MacGuyver ain’t got shit on me.
Upon arriving home I parked my car in the secured parking garage under my apartment building and, Macy’s bag slung on my wrist with keys in hand, I unlocked the door to the secured elevator room.
This next detail is important...As you all know, in the modern elevator, there is a gap of about 4 or 5 inches between the wall of the shaft and the elevator car itself. This, presumably, allows the elevator some amount of buffer room to keep the elevator from scraping into the walls.
As it turns out, this gap serves the alternate function of swallowing my keys when I clumsily drop them due to an unforeseen shift in the weight of a Macy's bag.
I was dumbfounded; the shot was one in a million. One moment I was seconds away from the warm embrace of my waiting bed and the next I was standing thunderstruck in the elevator room trying to will the keys back into my hand with the sheer magnitude of my disbelief at the events unfolding. After several moments of cursing everything from the Macy’s bag to the theory of gravity, I took stock of my situation.
1) I am locked out of my car and my apartment
2) Its 2:30 in the morning
3) The apartment office is long closed
4)All I have at my disposal are the clothes on my back, a cell phone with one bar of battery remaining, a plastic bag containing new shoes and socks, and a fierce desire to avoid spending the night in an elevator shaft.
Things were not going well.
In a state of mild panic and utter embarrassment I called up the one person with spare keys to my apartment. Ryan groggily answered his cell phone after the second consecutive call and I hurriedly explained my situation while apologizing profusely for the late-night crisis he was now, unwittingly, involved in. As it turned out, Ryan, indeed all of my friends, were much too intoxicated to drive. With a sense of growing dread and with Ryan acting as moral support and my link to the internet, I attempted to contact a local 24 hour locksmith with very little success. The only locksmith that actually answered his phone sounded more intoxicated that any of my friends and was, therefore, very little help.
What now, I asked myself? As four am came and went I found myself holed up in the building lobby with a growing headache and the sinking realization that I may actually be spending the better part of the night there as I waited for the main office to be open. It was then that Ryan informed me via text message that he was trying to sober up and would drive my keys out to me as soon as it was remotely safe to do so. He put the ETA at a hour at the very least but, truthfully, it was more likely that it take two. I thanked him and returned to the lobby chair to sit and wait for the cavalry.
I’m not sure if it was my intense need to avoid the embarrassment of sitting in the lobby like a homeless bag-man as the rest of the building filed out for work in a few hours or if it was my deepening guilt at the prospect of Ryan getting pulled over or worse on account of my clumsiness but, something galvanized me into action.
I returned to the parking level, held the elevator door open with my foot, and peered down the gap using my cell phones’ screen to for light. There, five or six feet out of my grasp, lay my keys splayed perfectly on the floor of the shaft. They were close. maddeningly close.
I then propped open the door to the elevator room and began roaming the parking garage looking for inspiration or material. I rummaged through garbage cans, looked under cars, and briefly contemplated trying to break into a blue firebird to obtain a length of rope I saw in the back seat. After a half an hour with nothing to show for my efforts I returned to the elevator room and hung my head in frustration. It was then, while gazing at my shoes in defeat that inspiration struck me.
I quickly pulled the laces out of my shoes and tied them together to create a string capable of reaching my lost keys. From the Macy’s bag I used a plastic hook that had held my pack of socks on the rack as the grappling hook on the end of my makeshift device. I excitedly lowered the hook down the opening but several attempt to the retrieve the keys illuminated a glaring flaw in my design. Weight. The weight of the hook on the end was not substantial enough to manipulate the keys onto the hook!
I desperately searched my pockets from items to add weight to the hook and settled on a green plastic lighter and a hand full of change. I lashed the items to the end of the hook with a pair of aging rubber bands I had found on the floor of the lobby and, when I was satisfied with the new weight, returned to the gap.
I made a few more passed with little luck and, although it was much easier to manipulate the hook with the added weight, things began to look hopeless. Then, all of the sudden, the keys were on the hook. My heart actually raced as I gingerly raised the keys towards me. I could almost feel the soft triumph of my bed as I watched the keys slowly ascend on my makeshift rope. I cried out in sheer frustration as I was struck from the side and the keys slipped of the hook and back down into the darkness of the shaft. In my excitement I had taken my foot off of the elevator door and, unrestrained, it had slammed into me making me drop my precious cargo. I was furious but encouraged. I had failed but it had shown me that my plan was, in the very least, possible.
I grabbed a garbage can and blocked the door and, once again, lowered the device into the shaft. I swept it back and forth on the floor, operating blind since I had no free hand to light the darkness with my cell phone. Panic swept over me as the first few passes yielded no contact with the target and I feared that the keys may fallen out of the reach of my hook. I dragged the hook across the floor again. Nothing.
It was in the middle of a particularly desperate plea to God that I felt the hook catch. The shoelace went taught with the weight of my many keys and, again, I delicately raised the hook and its cargo towards me. I held my breath and kept one eye on the elevator door until the keys were close enough for me to reach in and grab them.
My hand closed around my elusive prize and, in that moment, I had won the super bowl, won the Indy 500, and KO’d Mike Tyson. I had won the lottery and been elected president of the universe. I jumped to my feet, held the keys above my head and let out a victory cry that I’m sure woke up most of the fist floor of my building.
The walk to my apartment door felt like a parade in my honor and when my head finally hit the pillow I had smile on my face.
Moral of the story? Thanks to gravity and five inch gap in the floor I was shown that I have one of the best men in the world as a friend and that MacGuyver ain’t got shit on me.
posted by Jerry Kansky at
2:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home