Intuition

Something strange happened to me this week... I have a gift I was not previously aware of.

Let me start by saying this: I got stuck in an elevator on Tuesday. My friend Mollie and I were returning to work after a nice pizza lunch. We greeted our friend, Dianne, as she got off the elevator and then we stepped on with several others. After dropping riders off at the third floor, the metal death trap sputtered and dropped a little, then nothing. I panicked- pushed some buttons, including the alarm and the emergency phone and started randomly pushing numbers on my cell phone. I then got the bright idea to press floor five- not sure why, but it seemed to work. We started up again and stopped at five. We had to pry the doors open, but we were free, our lives had been given back to us. It seemed like an hour, but I think it all lasted about 2 minutes. Mollie and I gladly took the stairs to nine, huffing and puffing all the way.

But that's not what's strange. What's strange is that I almost got stuck in another elevator yesterday. I was at a training class in another building on the opposite end of the North side of Indy. My coworker, Neill, and I got on the elevator and and immediately I saw the red flags- lethargic doors, slow response to the selection of desired floor, and an overall air of trouble that my highly sensitized "bad-elevator" intuition picked up on. Then the situation went from bad to worse- four other people got on. In a split second I saw the future- we would soon be hovering between one and three, six of us, full from lunch, mostly strangers, trapped for who knows how long. It was too much for me. I was prompted to dive off the elevator before it departed. On my way out, I screamed "I'm taking the stairs- that elevator's going to get stuck." Neill followed, as did two of the other women, looking like they had been shocked into following my example. It must have been my foreboding tone. (They thanked me later...)

We walked up three flights of stairs and heard it..."ring, ring." The elevator was indeed trapped. I did my duty and reported it to the closest maintenance man I could find, then I smiled in relief as I walked into my class. And, I must say, for the next hour (yes, hour) as I heard the desperate "ring, ring" plea for help from my doomed classmates, I promised myself that I will always pay attention to my newly honed and proven trustworthy bad-elevator intuition.