Elevator ride

We’ve all heard of “elevator speech” as a term for a sales pitch you can give in a short time. Many MoveIn-ers* mention the elevator as an opportunity to get to know people. In a building that has some 20 floors and but a few slow – and, at times, idiosyncratic – elevators, it’s not a cliché that things can happen on an elevator.

Waiting in a lobby that kept filling and emptying of people, after passing up 3 opportunities to ride due to perceived overcrowding, I was rewarded with a near-empty elevator – until a crowd piled in with kids and strollers. Talking gregariously amongst themselves in a Slavic language, they were headed for the upper floors. The rest of us, however, did not live so lofty.

Floor 6: “Excuse me!” The lady from the far corner needs to get out. The crowd at the front shifts affably, partly disembarks, the woman steps out, and the rest pile back in, laughing and conversing all the while.

Floor 8: Huh? No one moves until a small “excuse me” comes from below. They chuckle amongst themselves at the Canadski as they shift again to let off the small boy earlier concealed in the back corner.

At Floor 9, the routine has become uproariously funny. I extricate myself from the back corner and bid farewell to my new friends.

There was such a spirit of goodwill in that elevator. Though we didn’t speak the same language, and our time together was short, we made a connection. It was the most fun I’ve had in an elevator.

*see MB Herald article to come, December 2009