Stuck in an elevator

Today I had an experience that I hope to not soon repeat. I got stuck in an elevator when the power went off. For whatever reason, an ‘Aerosmith’ song involving an elevator came to mind.

As soon as the power went off my mind began processing at warp speed. I thought back to the time we had overloaded the elevator with too many people and it got about one and a half floors up and then could go no more so it plummeted back to the bottom, slamming into the heavy-duty springs at the bottom and giving us all a good scare. I hoped that wouldn't happen this time.

I thought back to the time my friend Ben got stuck in the elevator under similar circumstances and how he had to crawl out of it to a higher floor eventually. He is much more agile and nimble than me.

I thought back to having helped countless people get out of the elevator when they had the misfortune of getting stuck inside during a power outage. The elevator uses a two-door system, and the external door is very hard to open from inside when it is not at a proper stopping location on a particular floor, so it almost always has to be opened from outside.

And now it was my turn . . . .

I began to assess the situation. I had with me my car keys, but little else of usefulness. I did not have my cell phone with me since I had just gone down to the car for 2 minutes to retrieve some things. That rules out calling the 50 feet up to my house to ask for help. I also saw that where I had stopped was almost exactly in between two floors, thereby making it almost impossible for me, being a full-figured man, to climb or crawl out to one of the floors.

I did, however, realize that I had one thing going for me. If it got to be really bad I could sustain myself for at least a couple of days on the two cases of Diet Coke I was bringing up from the car. 48 cans of Diet Coke would surely get me through a day or two. :)

I stood looking out the window of the elevator and wondering how long I might need to be there. Yelling was of no use, at least not in the beginning stages. After an hour or so, maybe, but not yet. Surely the power will come back on soon, right? I began mentally rewriting the lyrics to the aforementioned song about an elevator to pass the time.

Within about 10 minutes (a very short outage by normal standards here) the power came back on and I continued my ascent to the apartment. Not too much worse for the wear, but ever so thankful to be out of the elevator.

As I reflected on the experience, I realized there are several possible lessons to be learned here:
1. Always carry your cell phone with you, even if you are only going somewhere for two minutes.
2. Don’t freak out at the instant something like this happens. Wait at least 10 minutes before freaking out.
3. Carry lots of Diet Coke with you everywhere you go. You never know when you might get ‘stuck in an elevator’ or some other similar tragedy.
4. Listen to a wide variety of music so you have songs that pop into your head that you can rewrite the lyrics to in order to pass the time while stuck.
5. Always wear clean underwear.