FIRST PERSON | After listening to the on again, off again whipping winds and rain all evening through my slightly open office windows, I decided at about 2 a.m. on Sunday morning to take a break from writing and walk to the river directly adjacent to my building in New York City to see how high the waters had come up and to actually feel the tropical storm force winds.
As a native of the Deep South, I'm a veteran of hurricanes, so on the way down, I told myself, "Don't take the elevator." I took the stairs, and at street level of our partially underground garage, I safely observed a couple of persons who were walking around in the whipping rain. The rain was whipping so much that I could tell it was a stinging rain, and I changed my mind about going out into it, not wanting any part of that. Thanks, but no thanks. I've been in enough hurricanes to know what stinging rain feels like.
I wasn't able to see exactly how high the river had come up, so I decided to go to the top floor of my building to get a better view. I moseyed back into the building and, forgetting for a moment about the situation, stepped into the elevator and pressed number seven.
As the elevator approached the sixth floor, that's when it happened: The elevator jolted a little bit, as the power shut off to it.
"Oh no! This just didn't happen," I laughingly exclaimed to myself. "Stupid, stupid, stupid! I didn't just do this to myself! Why did I just do this to myself?"
After berating myself for a couple of thoughts and laughing in between, my rush of thoughts turned toward my wife, whom I had only told several minutes before I was going out to see how high the river had gotten.
"What would she think," I thought to myself. "How worried she and my daughter may get tomorrow, even tonight, if I'm stuck in here the rest of the night and into the day tomorrow. How stupid of me to worry them and lots of people who may start looking for me, thinking that I may have drowned in the river last night when going out to see it."
As these thoughts partially clouded my brain, I pushed the elevator buttons, knowing full well that pushing them wasn't going to make the elevator respond. Next, I looked at the roof of the elevator to see where I was going to climb out, if beating on the elevator door long enough in the morning didn't work.
I suddenly grasped the handrails: "What if this thing suddenly free-falls six or seven floors to the bottom?"
With one hand now always locked onto the handrail, I bemoaned and laughed about my predicament a little more. Then only a few short minutes later, the elevator was operative again.
Quickly, I pushed number one - "Before the thing shuts off again!" And as number six flashed on the elevator and then number five, I pushed number four, realizing I didn't need to go all the way to the first floor - "Get off this elevator as fast as I can!"
The elevator stopped at the fourth floor, only the doors didn't open. Now I thought, "Oh no! What if even after it makes it to the first floor, I still can't get out?"
As soon, and I do mean as soon, as the door cracked open far enough for me to wedge my elbow between it and the elevator door frame, I did so. The door continued all the way open, but I wanted to make sure that if the door started to close again, I was going to do what I could to get myself out of the elevator that Hurricane Irene shut down with me in it.
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