I’m going to tell you a story so scary you will never be able to look at a lift (or elevator for you Americans) in the same way again. Stairs will become your new best friend. What I am going to tell you is a true story and it happened to me. The dictionary describes a lift as such: Function: noun A platform or an enclosure raised and lowered in a vertical shaft to transport people or freight.
But I describe a lift as so:
Function: evil A platform dangling over the void of darkness or a claustrophobic enclosure of terror raised and lowered in a vertical shaft of doom and death to transport and create fear in people or freight.
It all started one Saturday about two years ago. I was working the weekend due to deadline time (and surfing the net) and I was the last person in the building. Around 10pm I finally decided it was time to go home, shut off my computer and got in the lift to go from the fourth floor to the ground floor… if only I had taken the stairs.
As the lift moved down the shaft it suddenly jerked to a stop. At first I thought nothing of it. I thought I had arrived at my destination. Only the doors did not open. I tried hitting a few buttons, nothing happened. It only took a few seconds to realize I was trapped between the first and second floor. It was a Saturday. Monday was a bank holiday. I realized there was a good chance I would not be getting out any time soon and I might have to eat my own arm to survive.
I don’t mind telling you that for the first couple of minuets I was scared like a little girly man. Visions of the lift falling down the shaft danced through my mind. Shouting and using the emergency buzzer did no good. There was no one else in the building. No one was coming to my rescue. In my panic I tried to open the doors with my bear hands. They opened easily but what was behind them was another horror like something out of the “Twilight Zone.” An old red brick wall up to waist height and then the outer lift doors. I tried to force open the outer lift doors but they would only open an inch and no more. For a while I let the panic in, pacing up and down the small space of the lift (but being careful not to shake it too much).
Then, as I started to calm down, came the moment that every man who grew up watching 80s TV dreams of… MacGyver time. Also known as “The bit at the end of the A-Team where they made something cool”. So I found myself thinking, “What would MacGyver do?” I took stock of my inventory.
1. A laptop with only a little battery power remaining
2. A mobile phone with a dead battery
3. Some paper
4. A technical drawing pencil
5. A can of coke
6. And my back pack itself
I started thinking things like, “Maybe I could somehow wire up my laptop battery to my mobile phone and charge it up. No.. wait… the lift is a dead spot for mobile phones.”
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This Best Blog post was excerpted from Invading Holland
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