This past weekend my life flashed before my eyes.
Well, not really. I just found myself in an extremely uncomfortable, frightening situation. It was one of those things that everybody fears, whether they’ll admit to it or not.
I was trapped between floors in a multi-story building.
See, we went to the mall this past weekend. It’s the big one in town, with five floors and maybe a hundred or so stores. They have a decent Radio Shack there that I wanted to browse, and J.C. Penney was having a sale.
We started our shopping adventure at Radio Shack. Understandably, my wife has little patience for my gadget fetish, and after a few minutes of watching me drool, she announced that she would take the Offspring to Penney’s while I finished coveting radio-controlled Hummers and surgically-implantable cell phones.
The two of them headed upstairs to Penney’s while I finished up at Radio Shack. I ended up purchasing a pack of LEDs and some batteries and marched off to meet them on the third floor.
Not five minutes later, there I was, in between the second and third floors, when the machinery ground to a halt.
I wasn’t sure what to do at first. I looked around, hoping things would start moving again. I think I even jumped up and down a few times. Nothing. Panic and bile rising in my throat, I tried to avoid hyperventilating while I frantically searched for a way to call for help. Once again, I was out of luck. There was no bright red phone, nor was there an “emergency” button.
It’s all right, I thought to myself. Somebody is bound to notice that I’m missing, and that things aren’t working the way they should be. All I have to do is be patient and remain calm, and I’ll be rescued. I had a bottle of water, and I knew that my wife could give my cell number to the paramedics if they had to talk me through any desperate escapes.
And sure enough, I wasn’t trapped for more than ten minutes before I heard the repairman’s voice, calling out to me as if from the Great Beyond: “Hey! Buddy! Get off the escalator!”
That was when I realized that when an escalator breaks down, it simply becomes stairs, and you can walk to the next floor. I breathed a sigh of relief, and made it to the third floor without further incident. When I emerged, victorious, onto the landing, I expected a round of applause and maybe a blanket and a cup of hot coffee. I was sorely disappointed.
I did, however, receive several eye-rolls, which aren’t nearly as heart- or soul-warming. I guess I should take what I can get.
This post is stuck on the thirteenth floor over at humor-blogs.com.
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