Thursday, January 05, 2006
The Elevator Dance
When I was a young teenager, my cooler older cousin Jill explained about the elevator dance. See, whenever you get into an elevator alone (or with someone else who is in the know, such as a cooler, older cousin), you’re supposed to dance in a writhing, Soul Train sort of way, shimmying all around that little suspended cage from the time the doors close until right before they open. The trick is to stop dancing before anybody else gets on…and to look as if you were doing anything except busting a move barely seconds prior. If you get caught, the jig is up. You’ve got to be smooth, so smooth nobody knows about your secret, groovy dance moves. The elevator dance is the opposite of what Napoleon Dynamite demonstrated (so masterfully, I might add) in the movie of the same name.
In the years since, I have danced in many an elevator. I have also shared the elevator dance with those who need to know (and who will, I hope, share the dance with other enlightened souls). The elevator dance was intended as a lark – I think my cousin and her brother invented it during a family vacation. You know the kind: your family is staying in some Holiday Inn at some beach and you’re too young to go off by yourselves so you spend a lot of time riding the elevators and having ice fights in the stairwells. However, I found an actual purpose for the elevator dance several years ago when I was working as a temporary in Atlanta.
At the time, I was in my mid-twenties and intent upon nothing more than working just enough to pay my rent and subsidize my concert-going hobby. I saw some great shows during that period, and I also worked in lots of big buildings in town. One job required me to hand-deliver “important papers” to the big cheeses whose palatial offices took up the entire penthouse suite of a 55-floor building (that shall remain unnamed). I worked on the 6th floor, but when I made a delivery, I had to take the express elevator which was frighteningly like the one in Willy Wonka that flew through the roof. Of course, I thought about flying through the roof every time I got on the express elevator. I also thought about the possibility of getting stuck in that elevator, which skipped floors 10 through 50. How long would it take the elevator repairperson to rescue you from the express elevator if you got stuck between stops? Claustrophobic much?
But the cheeses had to have their vital documents, and I needed money for Ticketmaster, so deliver I did. What calmed my nerves and made it all possible was good, Irish whiskey…kidding!! It was the elevator dance, of course. Every time I made a delivery, I practiced what Jill taught me long ago: ever so demurely, I waited until the gleaming doors enclosed me into that potential death-trap, looking like the fine, young professional I most definitely was not. As soon as I was sealed in, I commenced shaking my money-maker all over that elevator. The trick is to use your whole body, not just your booty, like some idiot frat boy who never moves his feet and bites down on his lower lip because his pledgemaster told him chicks dig that. Think Soul Train – shake anything that will shake and even a few things that probably shouldn’t.
I did the elevator dance every time I had to ride the express elevator; miraculously, there was never anybody else on the elevator with me, although I suspect that somewhere on the Internet there are bootlegged security tapes of a crazy woman flailing around in an elevator. I am not ashamed. The elevator dance kept me from hyperventilating during the dizzying ascent, and I always got a little thrill when, as the elevator stopped and the doors opened into the CEO’s realm, I stepped out all composed and appropriately dressed to present my offering to the captains of industry (or, at least, their executive assistants).
I was thinking about the elevator dance today and wondering how all those folks who took money from Jack Abramoff (a guy I can only assume is not a very good Jew, Orthodox or no) are coping with _that_ stress. Are the high-rises in D.C. full of nervous politicos slam-dancing in elevators, or are they merely banging their heads on their office desks? Personally, I wouldn’t be sorry if an express elevator filled with the likes of Abramoff, Scanlon, Tom Delay, and Georgia’s own poster boy for hypocrisy, Ralph Reed, blasted through the top of the Peachtree Plaza and into the Stratosphere.
Let’s boogie!
In the years since, I have danced in many an elevator. I have also shared the elevator dance with those who need to know (and who will, I hope, share the dance with other enlightened souls). The elevator dance was intended as a lark – I think my cousin and her brother invented it during a family vacation. You know the kind: your family is staying in some Holiday Inn at some beach and you’re too young to go off by yourselves so you spend a lot of time riding the elevators and having ice fights in the stairwells. However, I found an actual purpose for the elevator dance several years ago when I was working as a temporary in Atlanta.
At the time, I was in my mid-twenties and intent upon nothing more than working just enough to pay my rent and subsidize my concert-going hobby. I saw some great shows during that period, and I also worked in lots of big buildings in town. One job required me to hand-deliver “important papers” to the big cheeses whose palatial offices took up the entire penthouse suite of a 55-floor building (that shall remain unnamed). I worked on the 6th floor, but when I made a delivery, I had to take the express elevator which was frighteningly like the one in Willy Wonka that flew through the roof. Of course, I thought about flying through the roof every time I got on the express elevator. I also thought about the possibility of getting stuck in that elevator, which skipped floors 10 through 50. How long would it take the elevator repairperson to rescue you from the express elevator if you got stuck between stops? Claustrophobic much?
But the cheeses had to have their vital documents, and I needed money for Ticketmaster, so deliver I did. What calmed my nerves and made it all possible was good, Irish whiskey…kidding!! It was the elevator dance, of course. Every time I made a delivery, I practiced what Jill taught me long ago: ever so demurely, I waited until the gleaming doors enclosed me into that potential death-trap, looking like the fine, young professional I most definitely was not. As soon as I was sealed in, I commenced shaking my money-maker all over that elevator. The trick is to use your whole body, not just your booty, like some idiot frat boy who never moves his feet and bites down on his lower lip because his pledgemaster told him chicks dig that. Think Soul Train – shake anything that will shake and even a few things that probably shouldn’t.
I did the elevator dance every time I had to ride the express elevator; miraculously, there was never anybody else on the elevator with me, although I suspect that somewhere on the Internet there are bootlegged security tapes of a crazy woman flailing around in an elevator. I am not ashamed. The elevator dance kept me from hyperventilating during the dizzying ascent, and I always got a little thrill when, as the elevator stopped and the doors opened into the CEO’s realm, I stepped out all composed and appropriately dressed to present my offering to the captains of industry (or, at least, their executive assistants).
I was thinking about the elevator dance today and wondering how all those folks who took money from Jack Abramoff (a guy I can only assume is not a very good Jew, Orthodox or no) are coping with _that_ stress. Are the high-rises in D.C. full of nervous politicos slam-dancing in elevators, or are they merely banging their heads on their office desks? Personally, I wouldn’t be sorry if an express elevator filled with the likes of Abramoff, Scanlon, Tom Delay, and Georgia’s own poster boy for hypocrisy, Ralph Reed, blasted through the top of the Peachtree Plaza and into the Stratosphere.
Let’s boogie!
