Somebody stop me

I normally do not subscribe to clichés. Dismiss it outright. After all, for every “look before you leap” there is almost always an equal and opposite “strike while the iron is hot” so it seems. But one cliché I’ve learned to respect is how curiosity killed the cat. And I learned the lesson the hard painful way.

I’ve always had this morbid fascination on elevator safety measures. That is ever since I had to go to this Makati office building where one elevator shoots 28 floors up, almost breaking the sound barrier, all the while making all sorts of weird mechanical whirring noises and lights flickering almost dying. Then after a brief pause at the 28th free-falls all the way down to the ground floor no matter what button you press. And because I am usually there around 11 pm, for final editing, I am always all alone in those elevator rides from hell.

“Chose the wrong elevator again, eh?” Our computer graphics guy would often greet me when I do finally make it to the editing suite all pale and breathing hard still.

“It’s always the only elevator available.” I’d weakly mumble, knowing full well the reason why it’s the only elevator available.

And then there is also that other elevator in the office building of one client that always misses the floors by half-a-foot. You either step up or step down depending on how many people rode the elevator with you. They never did figure out how many people were needed to hit the target floor dead-on. Had they done so, I am sure they would not have hesitated in assigning a few interns to act as human ballasts.

The lone elevator in the office building where I worked, on the other hand, always seemed to be “under safety inspection”.

“Four floors up four floors down is good exercise” I’d often kid myself. I even made a game of it. To minimize the ill-effects of my Winston reds, I’d buy one stick at a time from the convenience store on the ground floor. That effectively cut my smoking down by half, saved a few bucks, and all that exercise was surely good for my cardio.

But one blue moon when our elevator did work, I found myself alone and wondering what triggers our elevator from completely shutting its doors. You know, when someone holds the elevator for you and uses his hands to prevent the mechanical doors from closing. Surely the engineers, in their infinite wisdom, would choose to trigger the abort-close-door-sequence on both the outer and the inner panels of the rolling door. It makes perfect sense. Some fool might actually try stopping the elevator by holding just the outer panel.

Scientific inquiry called for an experiment, just to be sure. I first tested the inner panel, and sure enough, the elevator re-opened as it found my hand blocking the way. Second phase of the experiment, I tested the outer panel. This time the elevator doors didn’t abort and completely closed. I desperately tried to wrestle my hand free but my pointy finger was definitely caught.

“Mommy!” I silently cried as I endured the most painful elevator ride of my life. You know the other cliché on how your whole life will flash before your eyes when you are about to die? True.

“What happened?” our executive producer asked, when I finally made it to the office all flustered and teary eyed, still nursing my throbbing finger.

He nearly fell out of his chair laughing on just about every other word as I explained the genesis of my all-important scientific experiment.

“You fool! You should have just pressed 2. That way, you didn’t need to endure the entire ride to fourth.” He finally offered when he was done laughing at my genius.

“The idea came to me, actually, just when I saw the elevator pass the third floor”