Lots and lots of laughs, maybe a few bottles of wine (ok, a lot of bottles of wine!), and fabulous food! And even dessert – yummmm!!! What more could you want? And so it was with great reluctance that well past midnight we headed home, our hosts accompanying us to the ground floor to guide us through the apartment shortcut to the back parking lots.
Lots and lots of giggling as we piled into the elevator, punched the buttons, and headed down. We didn’t notice that the annoying female voice that usually calls out the floors in French and English was not saying anything on this trip. That should have been our first clue. We called her Emily on the way up, the same as the equally annoying Emily, the voice of Bell Canada who can never answer your questions and just keeps saying “Please repeat your question!” “Please repeat your question!” until you begin screaming obscenities at the phone in total frustration until a real person answers. But I digress.
The next thing we know - BANG! You know that kind of bang – when the elevator lurches and you grab the handrail, and as the lift jerks up short you suck your breathe in and try to remember how many floors you had left to go before you die in some horrible heap on the floor? The kind where you wonder if the myth you have heard about jumping just before you hit the ground really works. The kind where everyone stops talking for a second, and then everyone starts talking all at the same time, but with a slightly hysterical pitch to their voice? Yeah. That kind of BANG!
Now I could go into a dissertation about how you really get to know your friends in these kinds of scenarios, and just how much time you would really like to spend in a confined space with them, but actually these friends are real peaches, way too much fun and I adore them all, so no worries there. The more time spent with them the better! The girls promptly and calmly pulled off their party shoes and party clothes be damned, plunked down on the floor to wait it out, all the while congratulating our selves on our foresight to use the powder room before heading out! My personal regret was that I had no knitting with me in my party purse to pass the time!
The boys were far more interesting to watch! Like 14-year old boys, they immediately began investigating the doors and reachable mechanisms to see what could be opened and how contact with the outside world could be accessed. The speaker to the night watchman was barely laudable, and so it took several tries to ascertain that the superintendent was on his way. But even that wasn’t enough to satisfy a few of our McGyver types who continued to pry open doors and levers, press every button they could see, ring the alarm several times to express their frustration at the slow response, all the while their wives imploring them to stop sticking their heads down between the floors looking under the elevator and leave it be least we end up with half a person should the elevator slip again! A few schemes involving a pen, a paperclip and some duck tape (thankfully no one had any) were suggested and rapidly discarded.
24’s Jack Bauer and his ability to escape from any situation might have been mentioned. The appropriate movie clips were recalled and reviewed in detail, and again discarded as they all had fatal endings! Aside from the fact that the cell phones wouldn’t work except to entertain ourselves by taking pictures of ourselves sitting on the floor, the girls’ only real lament was that the wine bottle they had with them was empty. Note to self – always carry a spare full one for the road elevator!
Eventually the superintendent arrived, only to inform us that the Otis Elevator Company www.otis.com emergency service was not answering their page – now what kind of emergency service is that?? Otis, you got some sp’laining to do!! Several theories were presented to explain the lengthy communication delay, but the one we all stuck with was that since it was after all Saturday night (in the wee hours of Sunday actually), the on-call elevator guy was likely down in the Ottawa Byward Market http://www.bywardmarketsquare.com/welcome/index.htm having just snagged something pretty to take home and was not going to give it up to come rescue us any time soon!
This realization really spurred the boys into action. Taking matters into their own hands, they convinced the superintendent that if they could have something to reach the second floor door levers, we could open the second floor doors and crawl out. Understandably the superintendent was reluctant, but after listening to those boys I think he realized they were getting out one way or another, with or without his help, and so in the interest of keeping his elevator more or less intact, after some delay a stepladder was eventually slipped through the crack from the first floor into the elevator. In 2 minutes it was all over. The boys released the lever, pried open the second floor doors and just like in the movies, we not so delicately clambered to safety.
Totally exhausted and still quite giggly at our little escapade, we hugged our hosts, teased them mercilessly about the big bucks they were spending for safety and security, and piled in the car and headed for home. Rest assured this will be one evening that is sure to become more embellished with every telling at future gatherings!
Bang Knit on….
ps.Wwe heard this afternoon that our hosts got stuck in the same elevator again later on Sunday afternoon - Otis, you in big touble now!!!
1 comment:
Okay, I'll admit it, I laughed. But it is interesting to see how differently the guys and girls handle a situation like that.
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