Being stuck in an elevator is one of those experiences that you don't really recognize until it has already been happening for some time. One minute you are getting off ofyour cell phone, stepping onto an elevator, pushing the button; the next minute you feel warm, like there isn't enough air to breathe; and you are trying to keep your mother from passing out; and at the same time you are wondering, "Are we really stuck in an elevator?" In the movies these moments are always life changing. You get off the elevator and you break up with your significant other, or you propose, or you finally buy that house you've been wanting or you cut your hair and decide that it's okay to be single-and then, of course, Mr. Right waltzes in the very next day. But in the end, it was an elevator, it was ten minutes; Mom paced back and forth and I quoted William Carlos Williams to take her mind off the situation. I talked about plums and chickens and afterwards I walked out and saw the Anthony Hopkins film I came for. I re-tell the story with gusto, with a little exaggeration, with hand motions, just for laughs. I checked out a book from the library, one full of graphs and blueprints and equations. It talks about the structure and mechanics and other nonsensical things that I will never understand. On the first page it says that safety, reliability, and efficiency should be characteris– tic of all elevators. According to some government source, the number of elevator-related deaths for passengers from 1997-2003 is only 39. A 76-year-old woman was once stuck in an elevator for six days. She even welcomed in the new year-1988-from that passenger car. The article says nothing about her health, but it also says nothing about her death. I do not know how she managed to live six days without food and water, and I wonder if she was able to sleep, if she thought she would never make it out, if she did something after getting out that she never would have done before. Everything I have read about elevators is written in a language I don't understand-a language of science and technology, with words like pneumatic lifts, sprockets, and worm dia– meter. Information on worm diameters and worm gear drives is found on page 162 ofLifts, Elevators, Escalators and Moving Walkways/ 26
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=