Going Up

Boy, you hear some strange shit in elevators these days.

It's probably because here we spend so much time getting from our homes down to the ground, from the ground up to our work, back down to the ground to get to lunch, maybe back up a new elevator to get to a client meeting, throw in an odd escalator to get to subterranean transport levels and let's not even discuss the dozens of stairways one must traverse to get anywhere. This damned place was made for up and down transport.

We spent the better part of travel time waiting for elevators to arrive at ground level to whisk us upwards (unless inpatient disgust forces one to schlep one's fat ass up six flights of stairs instead). Elevators seem to take an interminable amount of time and they move with snail like speed. I have often thought the second coming of Jesus Christ himself would be faster than the elevators in my apartment building. And He probably will be.

Still should you be one of the stalwarts that can wait out the ground floor arrival of an elevator, you usually will be gifted with some kind of intriguing exchange between friends or even more probably, between complete strangers.

Two examples from today:

On an elevator in an office building, a group of men are huddled together talking about football.
Man One: If Manning doesn't get it together for Sunday against Chicago, we're fucked.
Man Two: Minnesota turned the tide. New York teams suck.
Man Three: My friend has some beer flavored candy from Germany. He calls them Jolly Ranchers for men.
Man Two: That's awesome, dude.

On the crowded elevator in my apartment building tonight. I get in first and am closest to the control panel so I ask all inhabitants for their floors so that I may press the button on their behalves. We ride up one floor and I notice there is a strong smell. It could be fried food; it could be a really odoriferous fart.

We get to the second floor and a man clutching a plastic bag says, "Are you wondering what that smell is?"
Silence.
I respond with a smidgen of sarcasm, "Yes, don't keep me hanging. I have only one more floor to go!"
"It's the best take out ever from a southern place called Bama at 153rd and Amsterdam."
"Sounds like good eating," I say sweetly as I maneuver my way out of the elevator. Another man squeezes out behind me.
As the door shuts, the man who exited the floor with me said (slightly under his breath as he walked down the hall) "Smells like someone took a shit in that bag."

We're all friends here.