Erin Miller

my love-hate relationship with elevators

I went three months in Honduras without stepping into a single elevator. I remember being awed and confused when I first got into one at the hotel I brought my parents to when they visited. Now I use elevators approximately a dozen times a day. I live on the fifth floor of my building, and I use our elevator to get downstairs about half the time and almost always to get back up. Last week, our elevator broke. I hadn't really understood how much I liked having an elevator until I didn't. Five flights of stairs doesn't sound like that many, but after two days of living on a stair master, my legs ached as soon as I thought about going up a single step. Our elevator has finally been back in working condition the last few days. After Spot and I took our afternoon walk today, I gratefully slumped into the elevator and hit the button for the fifth floor. The door closed and the machine started making noise, but Spot and I didn't move. My heart started to race. I was officially stuck in an elevator. And it was surprisingly frightening. The closed metal created an immediately intense feeling of claustrophobia. The inner door was closed and the outer door was stuck, but I couldn't get the inner door to open so that I could close the outer door. I tried to take some deep breaths and called one of my roommates who thankfully happened to be home. She ran downstairs and tried to open the outer door to the elevator, but it wouldn't budge. I began to sweat. Then my roommate thoughtfully kicked the door in and the elevator began to move, letting a relived animal and human out on the second floor. Spot and I will be taking the stairs this evening.