Walla Squared (Part 2)

So when I left off, my mom, cousin, grandma and I had just finished a riveting conversation about tetanus.

And now a word about the elevator in the West Wing of the Marcus Whitman Hotel. (That's right. The West Wing. I was so close to the White House I could practically hear Josh Lyman screaming for Donna in the next room. What, they're not real? Preposterous.) Okay, so. It was nearing dinner time and we we made our way down the corridor to the elevator. As we were on the third floor, we had to pass the second on our descent. We stopped there and a man joined us. "Going down?" he asked? "Yes," we answered, "are you?" He smiled and let out a brief exhalation, as if attempting to stifle a cackle. "Oh I'm going down," he said, "in more ways than one." Now, I consider myself a fairly appropriate person. I'm polite when I need to be, and despite my awkwardness, for the most part I know when to act mature. I am well-versed in the Code of the Elevator: walk in, push button, face the door, and shut up (although one of my favorite pastimes is walking in and never turning around. It makes people really uncomfortable. It's very fun.) So because I'm so well-versed in the Code of the Elevator, I knew that it would be socially inappropriate to react to this man's comment, particularly because my reaction would not be to the comment itself but to the fact that he had just admitted something deeply personal to three strangers in an elevator in the middle of what we referred to as "the chicest of the podunk eastern Washington towns." However, I felt trouble brewing in the form of uncontrollable laughter squeezing its way up my throat. I bit my tongue. I bit my lip. I told myself, "Think about death. Death is sad" which is my longtime trusty laugh-stopper. We were almost to the bottom floor when to my horror my jaw unclenched and I let out a single unmistakable wail of laughter. It was short, and it's possible the man's hearing was so bad that he didn't catch it, but I certainly did, and I'm still mortified. Elevator Confession #1: Fail.

That leads me to our second encounter. This time we were heading up. We climbed inside and were followed almost immediately by a cheery young bellhop who asked us how we were doing. "We're great," we told him, "how has your day been?" "Oh, you know." He looked down, then at the door. "I've got a lot of things going through my head right now. Mostly good..." Can I just take a moment to ask exactly what about being in an elevator inspires such heartfelt confessions, particularly when the Code of the Elevator explicitly states that nothing is ever to be spoken while inside.

Encounter #3 was only a confession if you extend the definition of "confession" to mean any utterance of truth. We were on the third floor and pressed the down button. Several moments later the door opened and we walked in. But instead of going down, the elevator took us up to the fourth floor where we were joined by a delightful Indian family who said their hellos. (I'll tell you one thing: That was the friendliest elevator I've ever had the privilege of riding.) On our way down, we stopped at the third floor. The doors opened but no one came in and no one went out. The father expressed confusion as to why we had stopped when no one had chosen to do so. In her attempts to explain, my mother offered up the simple concise answer: "That was where we were." This quote became an endless source of entertainment for me and Naomi for the rest of the afternoon. In all fairness, though, my mom was trying to explain that the doors had opened because we had wanted to go down but climbed aboard the elevator on its way up, so I shouldn't give her too much crap. Notice the use of "shouldn't" rather than "can't." Because I definitely can. And have. But still. "This is where we were." As if it were not an explanation but a simple statement of truth that she merely decided to share with the occupants of the elevator. (Mama, if you're reading this, I love you! And don't worry--I'll put this blog post in the potatoes.)

Wow. That turned into a way longer story than I meant it to be. It's amazing how I can manage to blabber about one topic so much that reading its description takes approximately 4,000 times longer than the length of the actual encounter. That's just how I roll. Stay tuned for Part 3...if I decide to write one.