— Aaron Smith
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Vernon God Little sent out a bulletin survey called, "I Want to Know You." I am selectively answering this one question:2. What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator?
When I was 5 I was stuck on an elevator. It was my first elevator trip by myself. It was at Eastland Mall, and I'd demanded that I ride the two-story elevator, next to a stairway that simply went to an office hallway balcony, up all by myself. Things started out smoothly. The door closed with economy to an empty elevator. My dad had taught me to stand on one foot while riding down so that at floor stops, you felt the inertia and gravity; at that age, you also fell down a lot, too. So, misunderstanding how it works, I set myself into a Karate Kid stance and waited to go up.
And nothing happened.
I held the stance for a while, tripping into brief breaks, until I realized that the elevator wasn't moving. I looked around to see if any wires were torn out. I thought I heard the faintest bang at the door. At this point, I thought it was the hour mark; that's when I started to hear gears tear. Why did I pick this one elevator ride to be my first—and last?
I started wailing and crying. I didn't want to bang at the door, because I thought it might jar, so instead I dragged my hands against its carpeted sides like cats worship. This seemed to increase the ambient bangs from the door. Those bangs, I surmised, were what was causing the shift and shake I was feeling from the floor, and I would've yelled at them to stop if I could've cohered any word through a mouth so thick with saliva. This had to have been the two hour mark. Either way, I had only a few hours left before the elevator cables gave out from my weight, fell down what had to be a 100-story underground shaft beneath me, and exploded over the grinding spikes at the bottom.
Then the door opened. A crowd had gathered; none of them looked angry at the wait, because a crying 5 year old was the only passenger on the elevator. I'd been in there for fifteen minutes. At the front of the crowd was my mother, who scooped me up and explained what had happened.
I'd forgotten to push a floor button.
To this day if we step in an elevator together, my brother will lean across me, smile, knowingly ask, "Which floor?" and hit the button, as if to demonstrate.