The Elevator Ride

This is a story from last fall when I was working down in Los Angeles at SpotRunner.

A little background before I start my story:
My office is on the top floor of a twenty-two storey building. To get
there, I ride the 15-22 express elevators. Our express elevators blast
off from the first floor with discernible G force up to the 14th floor
then slow down for the milk run through the upper floors.

A little more background before I start my story:
My floor is a "secure" floor. The Turkish Consulate (!) is on the 17th
floor and is a secure floor, too. The elevator will not stop on those
floors unless you have a special keychain fob that you wave in front of
a special panel inside the elevator. You get in the elevator along
with everyone else and people press buttons for their floors, "18",
"15", what have you. But a person going to a "secure" floor must
wave their key fob at the special panel, then push 22 (or 17 if they are
going to the Turkish Consulate).

This extra security thing is not really much of a security barrier for
terrorists or other ne'er-do-wells to infiltrate but it *is* a very
ostentatious sign of office-grade class distinction. For instance, if
the lobby is crowded, the first person who gets on the elevator first
often stations himself next to the buttons and helpfully asks other
fellow travelers "what floor?" and presses the buttons for them. Not
really necessary, of course, but such small courtesies are part of
what makes the world go around (and the elevator go up). But the
person going to a special floor must (with a mock-rueful shrug and
half-smile) decline the "what floor?" offer, and say "I have to wave
this to get to my floor, sorry." They must reach past everyone and
wave the key fob and press the button themselves. Everyone in the
carriage watches this wordlessly, but the camaraderie of the upcoming
voyage upward is definitely broken -- someone from "First Class" is in
steerage. Icy silence reigns as the elevator leaps upward. The snob
is jubilant.

And another wee point about this particular bank of elevators:
There is some sort of irksome timing issue with our key fob security
system. There is a little light on the panel that is always glowing
orange. When the key fob wave is successful, the light goes red.
Then you can press the 22 button, the 22 button will light and the
elevator will eventually stop on the 22nd floor. The fob system seems to like to
wait a second or two before granting access, so you wind up jabbing away
at the 22 button until it lights. Sometimes, the little light goes
from red back to orange without the 22 button lighting and you have to
start the key fob waving over again. These antics are always conducted
in grim, frosty silence. The other passengers have already dubbed you an
elevator elitist (the worst kind) and no one will provide helpful suggestions or offer
encouragement. The helpful "what floor?" button-pressing man has moved as far
away from you and your key fob as possible, preferring to stand with
his disenfranchised, fob-less brothers and sisters.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I like being special and
having to press my special key fob to go to my special top-floor
super-spy-hideout complete with Inter-Galactic Council Chambers. But it is embarrassing
at the same time to have a showy, geeky, malfunctioning, self-important
procedure I make everyone else suffer. But that's life in the big
city.

One more point in general about elevators:
If the lobby is quiet, there will generally be an elevator carriage
sitting with its door open awaiting riders. If you walk into the
elevator and don't press any buttons, the elevator will still sit
there. Of course. It doesn't know where you want to go yet. Press a
button and off it goes. Or... wave your key fob frantically and jab
away at 22 (or 17 for the Turkish Consulate) and off it goes.

So, on with my story.
One fine evening, I and a colleague walked into our building after
stepping out to get some take-out food. The lobby was quiet and dark,
and there was an elevator carriage waiting for us. We stepped into the
carriage and got started on the procedure of trying to get approval to
travel to the 22nd floor. We both had our key chains out and ready,
and since there was no one else in the carriage, we could be quite
openly jolly about being First Class elevator travelers together -- no
coach passengers to feel slighted. In short, we co-operated on the
whole waving the key fob and pressing the buttons procedure. I am a new
employee and therefore it is appropriate for me to be slightly
obsequious. Therefore I was first and vigorous with the key fob wave
while my senior colleague manned the 22 button. No joy on 22 -- the
button wouldn't light. So, with a mock-exasperated sigh, the "veteran"
did the key fob wave while I meekly worked the 22 button. The elevator
doors closed and off we went. However, the 22 button still wouldn't
light. I pounded relentlessly and enthusiastically on the button.
So many things are difficult at a job when you are new, and that day
like most days was fully of "new guy" humiliations big and small --
so this evening, at this moment, I told myself I was not going suffer
defeat to an elevator button simply for lack of effort! Thus goaded,
I redoubled my efforts. Stab stab stab stabitty stab stab stab...

My colleague faltered, his fob-waving slowed, then stopped. I stabbed and stabbed.
He turned to me and said "Dude..." I jabbed away, heedless. stab stab stab "Dude! Dude!"
He put his hand on my arm to stop me "Dude, stop pressing the button.
Stop! Look. There are no buttons lit. And there's no one upstairs... "

I stopped. We stood there and looked at the unlit buttons. We were closing in on the Turkish Consulate's floor with no sign of slowing, and the panel remained unlit.

He said slowly, "Dude? Where.. are.. we... going?"

The elevator carriage kept whooshing skyward, now faster than ever it seemed, so it was becoming
comically urgent to get our floor selected. Finally, laughing and screaming "augh!!!!", we both mashed our
key fobs against the panel to get the light to go red again and we
machine-gun pressed the 22 button. The Turkish Consulate was fading in our taillights and we were still
accelerating skyward
before the button finally lit up! Moments later the elevator calmly slowed
and stopped at 22, with a smooth calm, quiet finish. The doors efficiently whisked open and we peeked out at the dark, empty
lobby on the 22nd floor. No one had summoned the elevator to 22 or any
other floor -- the lobby was dark because the lights go out when no one is around.

We got out, the lights came on, and life seemed to return to normal. But we just stood and looked at each other, then looked back at the
elevator. The elevator doors stayed open, the carriage still. Clearly, the elevator had
nothing else pressing to do, no other urgent business requiring a headlong unasked-for rush to the basement, say. So where had the elevator been taking us at top speed? Good thing we managed to get it to stop at 22!! If we hadn't pressed any buttons, where would it have gone?
To the roof, the universe, and beyond? Or even further, say, to Santa Monica?

We still don't know what that was all about.

Snow Pudding with Hard Sauce

At Christmas time when we were children, my Mum used to serve snow pudding. In that long-ago time we felt very modern and had left behind the old ways, so much so that snow pudding wasn't made out of snow anymore. By the 1960's Canada had become a prosperous Dominion and contemporary mothers used whipped egg whites to give snow pudding its ethereal frothiness, not snow. Still, with eyes a-twinkle Canadian fathers would sagely tell solemn youngsters that snow pudding was made "with clean snow from out in the back yard over by the fence where no one has walked, cooked extra slowly in your mother's double-boiler, you see, so that the snow won't melt as the pudding sets. Your mother has to make snow pudding while you children are at school, because running and jumping in the kitchen can make the snow-fle fall." Good grief, that's a bad pun, but it's pretty funny when delivered without a smile to children who don't know they are being had.

Snow pudding sounded and tasted wonderful. When the poet wrote "as pure as the driven snow", he was probably reaching for "as pure as snow pudding made with real snow from over by the fence where nobody has walked."

However, served alongside snow pudding came (insert terrifying chord) hard sauce.

Hard sauce?!?!?!?

HARD sauce?!??

hard SAUCE!?!?!

"Hard sauce" sounds as unappetizing as runny sauce.

Or scratchy sauce.

Heavy sauce.

Woolen sauce.

10w30 sauce.

Iron sauce.

Big sauce.

Coal sauce.

Dry sauce.

Birch Bark sauce.

Waxy Sauce.

Lye sauce.

Black sauce.

Bug sauce.

Black bug sauce.



Kitten sauce.






Low sauce.

Ralph sauce.

Carcinogenic sauce.

Box Sauce.

Hard sauce.

"Black bug sauce" reminds me of another freakish concoction Grandma served in the summers, called "shoo fly pudding". But that's another story (about merry-eyed fathers spinning yarns at the table to nauseous children) for another time. It's becoming apparent to me that I was raised by wolves.

But back to our current story....

On Christmas Eve (or Boxing Day) silent youngsters would receive a brief stern lecture about the "very lucky children in this room" and then out would come the snow pudding. And the hard sauce. At the kitchen table we would receive a small portion of snow pudding, sans hard sauce thank Goodness.

We each had at some time surreptitiously tasted the hard sauce. I remember once, when I was alone in the kitchen, taking a small spoonful of the solid, burnt-orange substance. It didn't look promising, but if it was forbidden and an accompaniment to heavenly snow pudding, it must be a subtle wonder, too. Into the mouth went the spoon. Ewwwww! Out came the spoon, just as quickly. The taste was lingering and sour, like something burnt. Once on the tongue, the sour paste melted and the fumes immediately went up the nose, working as an aide to over-congestion.

Most things that adults forbid are actually pretty great! Second helpings of pie. Staying up until midnight to see in the New Year. Throwing around tennis balls in the back-back of the station wagon. All forbidden, all wanted.

However, hard sauce was one of those rare things that was forbidden, like coffee and whiskey, but that didn't need forbidding. "Children, you may NOT have a cup of coffee." Hello!?!?! Did you see us trying to sneak some coffee when you weren't looking? Du-uh!! It's so gross!!

So... we children would have our pure, sweet snow pudding in the kitchen.

The rest of the snow pudding, all of the hard sauce, and all of the adults would sail off into the living room. We didn't have dining rooms then. There was only one table in the house for eating at. The adults were in the semi-darkened living room using (wow!) TV tables or (gasp!) no tables at all.

Being left unattended by adults was a rarity. In those uncomplicated times, we children were not suspicious of what our parents were up to in the living room. We noisily enjoyed our good fortune and flicked spoonfuls of snow pudding at each other.

In the living room, our parents served snow pudding to their friends. As well, they politely and magnanimously allowed themselves and each other to partake in the hard sauce. Was this simply a Christmas tea party, or do I remember increasingly raucous laughter?

Looking back now (A La Recherchee du Temps Perdu) as I casually flick tapioca pudding at the kittens, I have a grown-up's sharp and cynical mind. NOW I wonder what the heck was going on.

Were the grown-ups getting into the sherry? Or does hard sauce have hard liquor in it, as the name suggests? Or maybe they were simply flicking snow pudding at each other and didn't want to encourage the children.

In recent years, whenever Grandma gets to acting silly, I ask archly if she's gotten into the hard sauce again. I never found out and still don't know what hard sauce actually is. I know I could Google it, but I really don't want to know.

The name "hard sauce" conjures up something better than the reality ever could be. I'll leave it at that.

The "Quiet Car"

Tatiana and I are going by train up to see Grandma at the end of the summer.

We were looking through the Amtrak website to see all the fun things there are to do on the train, and we came across something that made me burst out laughing: The Quiet Car

The whole concept of a Quiet Car is just a recipe for trouble. Just imagine the never-ending misery of the Quiet Car porter who must enforce a lengthy list of petty infractions.

If I adjourn to the Quiet Car to enjoy my Dickens and suck on a humbug, here are some misdemeanors might hear:

• Faint headphone music...psh psh PSH psh psh PSH phphPshphphPsh psh psh psh PSHHH
  
  
• The door opening from the next car with a loud sliding bang and and the inevitable loud question "is this the quiet car?"
  
  
• The porter who quietly rushes over with finger on lips to murmur "mmm rrr mrm mrr mmr rmmr mmr Quiet Car mmmr rr mr rm r quiet mmm rm mr " The porter leans forward during this whispered speech bending at the wait, hands pushing slowly down on the air in a manner that signifies "keeping it down".
  
  
• A cell phone ring "beedly-deep-dee-bee Deedly-deep-dee-BEE DEEDLY-DEEP-DE..." until someone trashing frantically cuts it off, then says "sorry" to all in a stage whisper. This happens 8 times an hour, with each new guilty soul being chastened by their conscience "judge not lest ye be judged". People whose phones have not rung yet, still feel free to frown and think that a loudly whispered "sorry" simply doesn't cut it -- banishment would suffice.
  
  
• That merry crinkle of cellophane, much beloved of dogs and wee children everywhere. After the first unfortunate "crink", the offending crinkler freezes and his mind turns to the dilemna... is it better to perform an agonizing long series of irregularly timed smallish crinkles? Or perhaps one should perform a (hopefully) single rifle-shot CRINK-KLE that startles everyone in the Quiet Car, breaking the dozy hum? Or is better to forgoe Liquorice Allsorts all together, for the sake of the common good?
  
  
• Faint headphone RAP music... "THUMMM...tinkle-tinkle pshhhhhhhhhhh THUMMM.... tinkle-thinkle pshhhhhh psh pshhhhhhh tinkle tinkle psh psh THU-THUMMM pshhhhhh".
  
  
• The insistent murmer of the porter making the rap music (but not the other music) turn off "mmm rrr mmm Quiet Car.... . . . .ask you to leave... rrrm mmr mm THUM THUM mrrr m rmr mr rmrm r". A felony offense.
  
  
• Astonishingly loud outrage expressed at being ejected from the quiet car despite headphones set to 4, only one cell phone eruption, and restrained cellophane crinkling. "WHAT? I have said not one word!" Indignant feelings everywhere, except the porter who is more miserable than ever.
  
  
• The sound eyeballs make when glaring indignantly and self-righteously at the Noisiest Person on the Quiet Car. You can probably almost hear the wool-clad cold shoulders, too.
  
  
• Snoring, which brings the porter every time.
  
  
• Shhh! though is never heard, because that's what you say to small children and it would be rude to hear it in the Quiet Car, where nothing should be heard.

The quiet car is probably overrun with Canadians.

Tatiana and I think there should be a Noisy Car, too, crowded with Nicaraguans, Mexians, Italians etc dancing conga lines the whole trip long (da da du du da DA! da da du du da DA!) I don't mean to cast aspersions on other nationalities, except to say unless you think you can open a package of butterscotches without waking up a puppy (part of the Canadian citizenship test), you don't belong in the Quiet Car.