Mildly Phobic

I have a mini-fear of elevators.

It's not a debilitating fear, by any means. It's not like I cling to the hand rail screaming anymore or anything.

(I know people like to pretend that the hand rail is there for balance, but let's face it, it's totally there because when the elevator goes careening toward the ground people are going to want to hold on to something.)

Anyway, I do get a little panicked when I feel like an elevator is about to screw me over. The elevators in my building have a sordid history of trapping people inside them -- thankfully, it's never been me -- but it means the thought is always in my head. I'm always just about to get trapped in an elevator.

And everyone knows, the next logical step after an elevator trapping you inside it, is for said elevator to lose its grippers or snap its cables and crash forty feet to the ground.

Admittedly, I know very little about the inner mechanics of elevators. I know just enough to assume that one faulty system likely means the whole thing is going to go down in flames.

I take two elevator trips into my office, and out of my office, meaning four elevator trips in a workday. The elevator in my parking garage is no better than the one in my office, in fact, is slightly worse, as it has an inclination to break down in cold weather. Just for the heck of it. It's cold and doesn't feel like working any more than the rest of us.

The past couple weeks, the parking garage elevator has had some problems with the door-opening mechanism. I stepped in it the other day, hit the "G" and the "door close" buttons. Nothing happened. Similarly, nothing happened when I pressed the button more impatiently and insistently, and not even when I leaned on it angrily. The button was most definitely ignoring me.

I decided it must be broken, and made a move to leave through the perpetually-open door, when the buzzing started.

You know that buzzing -- it's the one that sounds when someone is holding down the "door-open" button -- like your boss trying to give you some last-minute projects to work on as you're trying to leave, or the strange lady from the second floor who wants to hold the door open for her friend who will be here any second.

I know quite well what the buzzing means. Logically, that is. My instinct, though, when I hear that sound, is to assume that it is the elevator's double-secret warning buzzer, you know, saying "all systems failing" and "evacuate immediately" and "this elevator will self-destruct in T-minus twenty seconds".

So, the elevator started buzzing even though no one was pushing the door-open button, but rather there was something wrong with the door-closing mechanism. At the same time, the door started closing.

Mind you, the door closing was precisely what I had been trying to accomplish. I'd been feverishly pressing the button seconds before.

But now, the door was closing and the buzzer was sounding.

In the split second I had to make a decision, I darted out the elevator door before it closed all the way. I mean, the ability to open and close its doors is, in my opinion, the second-most important job an elevator has. Behind only being able to move, you know, up and down. Safely.

So, I'm thinking, if this elevator can't figure out how to shut its doors correctly, it's probably on its last leg of being able to remember how to open its doors appropriately, which means if I stay in this elevator, I will get down to the first floor and be stranded there for the remainder of the day, and that would mean being stranded roughly 14 feet above the bottom floor of this elevator's path, seeing as it how it also travels to the basement; and as I mentioned before if an elevator is stuck, it stands to reason that it is mere seconds away from plummeting.

I took the stairs.

Okay, maybe it is a debilitating fear.

Don't even get me started on airplanes.