How I Almost Died on My 28th Birthday*

*Title of post could be an exaggeration-- I didn't stick around long enough to find out.

This post has nothing to do with the fact that I woke up at 6:30 today to find a power outage and my thermometer telling me it was 18.4 degrees.  (Thank you, Austin Energy).  I was lucky and the power came back on just as I was considering the pros and cons of cuddling with a bottle in bed to warm it up before the baby woke up.

I am totally and completely afraid of all elevators manufactured after approximately 1988. I could get on an elevator and ride up 78 stories as long as it was a new elevator.  But the old ones all seem to have a mind of their own, and I always seem to be in them when they malfunction.

A history, if you will-

1. I once arrived at law school at 6:50am, preparing to go to the library when it opened at 7.  I got on the elevator (alone) and rode up to the second floor.  When the doors opened, I was eye level with the third floor.  The doors closed again, and when they re-opened, the elevator was about 1 foot higher than the floor itself.  I pushed my way through the doors as they tried to close again, not sure that the third time would really be the charm here.

2. The elevators at the AG's office were so frequently in disrepair that they actually kept an "out of service" sign inside each of the elevators.  The elevator would often just stop, wide open, on a floor and choose not to work for a couple of days.  At least twice I would get in, press the floor I needed, and was dropped of on another floor for no apparent reason.  All of this was punctuated by the fact that no one replaced any of the 9 20-watt light bulbs in the elevators until only one remained lit, so most of these adventures took place in almost pitch blackness.  The elevators were so bad that I actually instituted a personal rule that I never got into the elevator having to go to the bathroom or hungry.

3. I was in Philadelphia on work and got into an elevator on the 56th floor, rode down, felt the belt pop, and it went back up several floors, stopped, and finally returned to the ground where it let us out.  There were about 6 other people in the elevator at the time, and I'm pretty sure I pushed them all aside to get out once we got to solid land.

So we agree I have a justified fear of elevators, yes?

Anyway, today I went to my birthday party YWA board meeting, and brought the baby with me in the stroller. Once the meeting was over at 8 I packed up and hustled out because the baby was supposed to eat at 7:30 and I knew I was pushing my luck.  I said my goodbyes and got on the elevator, briefly thinking "I wish at least one other person was in here with us."  Famous. Last. Words. Thoughts.

I got on at the second floor and pushed "1."  And then I felt that tell-tale "pop."  As you can see from my vast elevator incident repertoire listed above, I knew that wasn't good.  I tried to tell myself there was nothing to worry about.  The elevator started its descent.  We reached the bottom.  AND NOTHING HAPPENED.  I try to convince myself to relax- sometimes it just takes a second longer than I think it should for the doors to open.  BUT THEY DIDN'T OPEN. 

Suddenly I'm having 15 thoughts at once.  How do I protect Drew?  If the doors open, I'm going to push him out onto whatever floor the doors open to, but will I have time to get out, too?  What if the doors don't open level with a floor, how will I get him out then? 

Now the elevator jerks back to life.

I start hearing voices and realize that we are headed back towards where we came from.  I'm considering screaming to everyone that we have a situation on our hands.  As I consider that possibility the elevator stopped and the doors opened and I came FLYING out of that elevator with the baby, apparently with a look on my face that let everyone know something had gone horribly wrong. 

I stood outside that elevator for about 10 more minutes while I distributed my stuff among everyone so we could take the stroller down the stairs, and those doors never opened again, despite pushing the button to call the elevator.

So my 28th birthday started out with a little more drama (and likely grey hairs) that was expected.  Now if the "Blizzard of the Century" would just move along....