Elevator Adventures

I related this story in a comment on Facebook, and thought I should probably post it somewhere more permanent. I'm going to try to post more anecdotes as they pop into my head, partly to fill space here, partly so I get stuff down when I remember it.

Once, when we were in our twenties, I was on a crowded elevator on my way to an ESFCAS meeting on the top floor of the Students Union Building at the UofA, when Ardian ran up. Seeing me already in the elevator he pushed his way in to stand next to me in the back. Because I thought saying random spy stuff in public places was funny, I turned to him and said in a stage whisper, "Did you bring the explosives?" .

Ardian stares at me strangely and says, "Yes. Yes I did" and opens his coat to reveal twenty sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest.

And we stood staring at each other as everyone else started jabbing buttons for the floor the elevator was passing, and got the hell out of there, even though it was after hours and those offices were all closed.

"Adrian," I asked when we were alone, "Why are you wearing a dynamite vest?"

To which he reasonably replied, "Because Ive just come from a audition for the play House of Blue Leaves and I was trying out for the part of the guy with the dynamite vest. Why did you ask me if I had brought explosives?"

"I don't know," I shrugged, and we went to our meeting.

* * *

I've told that story more than once over the years, because it's a pretty good story, but my daughters often looked like they didn't believe me. Then they had the opportunity to meet Adrian on one of our trips, and the youngest one looked at him and said, "elevator story?" and Adrian said, "Oh, you mean the dynamite". So that was another good moment, because if they had to believe that one, then all the other slightly less outlandish stories were also now on the 'could be true' list.

* * *

A few years later I got into another crowded elevator, this time at work with Dr. David and he asked me something like, "Why in the world did you volunteer to be on that committee?"

And I said, "Because if I get on that committee, it's possible I'd qualify for [more senior] committee and if I did well there, I could maybe work my way all the way up to the [most senior] comittee."

"But why would you want to be on that [senior] committee?"

"Because then I could rise to be Chair of [Department]?"

"Okay, but why would you want to?"

"Because once there, there'd be no stopping me. Tomorrow, the World!"

"Yes, but why would you want to rule the world? It would entail a lot of headaches."

"Yeah, but...if I ruled the world... maybe then I could finally get a date."

At which point, the rest of the elevator, colleagues from other departments who had been trying hard to pretend they weren't listening to us, exploded into laughter. And the doors opened on the ground floor, and everybody went their seperate ways. I was pleased I had been able to lighten the mood, if only momentarily, for an elevator full of stressed management types. A few perhaps, might even have given thought to their own motivations for struggling up their respective career ladders.

* * *

And then there were the elevators at the Faculty of Education at the UofA where I was doing my PhD. Whenever I got in it, I would say hello to the elevator, and wish it a good day when I left. Which was, admittedly odd behaviour, but I was living alone at that point, and didn't really have classes, so was pretty much on my own a lot of the time, so talking to the TV and the computer and now the elevator had become a bit of habit. (Fans of my short stories will recognize where Alan and Fami get their perchance for talking to their toasters, fridges, watches, etc.) Anyway, inevitably, I got caught doing this a couple of times by colleagues who, not unreasonably, inquired after my well being and, I believe, mentioned it to the Chair of the Department.

I'm told you talk to the elevators," he said once when we both arrived at the elevator doors at the same time. He used a jocular tone as if to say, "I haven't called yet security, but let's see where this conversation takes us."

"True," I confessed, "but I would like to point out I am the only person in the department who has yet to be stuck in the elevators."

"What, never?" Because, getting stuck in the elevators had become sort of a regular thing that year. At least, it happened a couple of times, and people arriving late for meetings or night classes and would frequently announce, "Sorry I'm late, but I got caught in the elevator again just now."

"Not once."

He gave me a calculating look, and did not raise the issue with me again. But then, several fellow grad students, rather sheepishly, approached me with something like, "I hear talking to the elevators means you don't get stuck in them, eh?"

"Talking politely to them," I would always clarify. Because often, getting stuck in the elevator had caused them to express some very negative feelings about the elevator for some weeks following any little incidents, like "I hope this stupid f-ing elevator doesn't get f-ing stuck again. I don't have time for that s**t today."

I never once got stuck in either of those elevators for all the years I took them (over 20 by my calculations) and I noticed that people had stopped swearing at them and that the elevators stopped getting stuck, though who is to say in which direction the causation runs there?

Photo: Freepik.com

The Elixir of Life

 I enjoy CBC's Grown-ups Read What They Wrote As Kids,  so in the same spirit, here is my major creative writing assignment from Grade 6*.

Clearly, a budding genius even then.

I'd kept it all these years partly because I was raised by a hoarder who taught me one must never throw anything of that sort out; and partly because I was aware that I would someday become a teacher and would need to calibrate my expectations for students by comparing their work with mine at a similar age, as opposed to against the great masters of literature, which seemed to me at the time to be the bar. I didn't become a Grade 6 teacher, but I did have daughters, both of whom were greatly relieved that no matter how bad their own Grade 6 writing, they were considerably better than their dad. I also kept all my university papers, and looking back at those periodically has kept me humble and a better marker. "These kids today don't know anything!" is a common refrain, but people forget how they didn't know much as an undergrad either--kind of the point of going to university, really.

I also clearly remember being concerned my teacher would think I had plagarized from Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Colors of Space which I had read as I started outlining for the assignment and by which I was greatly inspired. I had only discovered Science Fiction half-way through Grade 6, and Bradley's was perhaps the second or third book of that sort that I had read, so my limited familiarity with the field meant that I thought I was copying by having, you know, spaceships. In retrospect, I'm fairly certain anyone would be hard-pressed to find any parallel between the two works.

Knife Fights

I going to try to post more, and relate random stories from my life as they come up as my kids ask me stuff or questions come up on social media. A writers' list today had a discussion of knife fights, so here are my three knife-fight stories, while I think of them:

1) A classmate in grade 11 was offended by my subjected-headed, color-coded, neatly hand-printed chemistry class notes (of which I was, admittedly, inordinately proud) so he came to my desk and slashed through them with his six-inch knife. Having put a ridiculous amount of effort into those notes (being dysgraphic, "neatly printed" implies insane levels of commitment, but I had been told that was the only way to learn Chemistry) I had placed my hand down over my notes to protect them. I hadn't believed he would actually cut through my hand, he hadn't believed I'd be stupid enough to put my hand down in front of a moving knife blade.

So that happened. When the principal drove me to the UofA hospital with my finger hanging by a thread, the resident in the hospital took one look at it and said, "oh wow, you're in luck" and disappeared. A short time later a group of about 11 doctors showed up and sewed it back up. Turns out, the worlds leading expert on reattachment was there from England giving a seminar to the doctors at the hospital, and they all poured into my cubicle while he sewed me up. "Now here's where a lot of guys make a mistake. You have to reattach the tendon with this technique, not that one" or some such. (This was 50 years ago or so, so can't get the wording exact.) Slightly surprised that wasnt considered an operating-room operation, but I was awake and they just did it right there on the gurney in the ER.

Still have a pretty cool scar on that finger, but otherwise, types fine.

Classmate was incredibly apologetic and I never identified him because I had recognized it had been an accident (adolescent males, eh?) but pretty sure that would be his only knife fight story too.

2) My third or fourth day as a substitute teacher, I arrived in that day's assigned junior high to find two males facing off against each other holding knives. Being inexperienced and not knowing that one should not insert oneself into a knife fight I said, "Right! What's all this then?" in my best Monty Python voice. I put my hand out for the knives. Which they both fell over themselves to give me, having realized before I had arrived that they did not want to have a knife fight, but had no idea how to back down with everyone else watching this standoff. "Oh damn! If this guy had made me give him my knife, you'd be dead, man!" "Oh yeah? You would have been dead if this guy had made me give him my knife!" Had either of them been vaguely serious, I would have had a very short teaching career. The punchline though is that when I phoned down to the principal's office to report having taken knives off two students and asking for a little backup here, the VP replied, "Is that 8F?" I allowed how it had in fact been 8F. "Well,can it wait until after lunch?" "Knives," I repeated. "I had to confiscate knives from two students in a knife fight." "Yeah, that's 8F. I'll see you after lunch." I chose not to return to that school.

3) A young protege of mine found himself holding a knife facing another guy holding a knife on a dark street with no one else around and the other guy was apparently quite serious about this being an ACTUAL knife fight. My protege, realizing he was about to die, made the unexpected move of stabbing himself in the stomach. His opponent went, "The F***?!" and took off. My protege dragged himself to the bus stop where the driver called an ambulance. When the police asked him, who did this to you, he said, "I stabbed myself" and the police said, "look, we know you don't want to testify against the other guy, but the bus driver saw the fight." "No, I actually stabbed myself" "Don't worry, we won't ask you to testify, but he's going down for this." etc. Not a strategy I'd recommend, but he did survive.

Image Credit: http://www.clipartpanda.com/clipart_images/hand-with-knife-clipart-3568526