I am getting very worried that I am soon to fall back into my habit of abandoning my blog for months at a time.  I really think it will be far easier when we actually have the internet IN OUR APARTMENT.  Hopefully that will be in the next  couple of weeks or so.  We were supposed to have had it this past Tuesday, but it turns out that there is something wrong with our phone jack, meaning: Park Towne doesn't have active phone lines.  So we can't use the provider we thought we could use.  Back to the drawing board we go.

Recently I was propositioned in the elevator at work, which got me to thinking about elevator etiquette and how elevators present a kind of social difficulty because you're essentially trapped in a small enclosed space with a bunch of strangers.  Sometimes I wonder what elevator rides were like before the invention of cell phones and iPods.  Because if you're ever in an elevator, pretty much everyone around you is completely engrossed in either tapping away on a phone or clicking around on an iPod.  Did people just used to look at each other awkwardly?  Or stare at opposite walls equally as awkwardly?  Or did people actually know how to handle themselves and hold short, polite conversations about the weather for the duration of the ride, at the culmination of which they would wish each other a good day?

(By the way, if I'm any accurate representation of the elevator-riding population, which I may not be because I doubt my ability to accurately represent any sort of normal population, then at least one person in every elevator is actually faking being engrossed in whatever it is they look like they're wholly absorbed by).

But back to my story.  I totally got talked-up in the elevator.  By a rather large, short fellow with a poor sense of style and braces.  He got on on the floor where there is a dentist.  

When the doors opened, I immediately turned my focus to my bag and rummaged around in it purposefully, even though I wasn't actually looking for anything.  This is because I am occasionally flustered in social situations and prefer to play the avoidance card whenever I can.  Braces got on.

Me: *rummage rummage rustle*

Braces: "You're pretty."

Me: *slight pause while I decided how to respond* "Thank you."  I went with politely distant and stared up at the numbers, wondering why, since the elevators in my building usually hurtle their way down the shafts at alarming rates, this particular elevator seemed to be taking its sweet time.

Braces: *still staring determinedly at me*  "Do you have a boyfriend?"  He started grinning at me after this and I started fervently wishing that someone else would just please get onto the elevator thank you.

Me: *another pause because I hate this question and don't know how to answer it* "Yes."  It's not entirely true, but for all intents and purposes it was the correct answer in this particular situation.

Braces: *still grinning* "Do you want another one?"

Me: "Not…really?"  At this point I was almost feeling bad for him, his game was so feeble.

Braces: You sure?

Me: "Yes.  I mean, thanks…I'm flattered…but no thank you."  For some reason when I am confronted with unfamiliar situations I revert into this hyper-polite and formal mode of interaction.  It's weird.  It also happens when I am confused or uncomfortable.

We had to ride down a couple more floors together in silence.  I spent the whole time watching the numbers light up above the doors and thinking "let me get out, let me get out, let me get out."

When I came back with my lunch, he was standing outside the front door to my building talking to the doorman.  I tried to conceal myself behind a woman who was talking loudly on her phone as she entered the building.  I don't know if it worked or not, but I got in and back up to the 17th floor without being hassled further.

I find that elevator interaction is rife with disjointed social interplay.  Think about it:

1) How long do you hold the door?

2) If you hit the "close doors" button, are you an asshole?  What about if you do it not realizing that you shut the doors in someone else's face?

3) When you get on first and hit your floor, are you supposed to ask everyone else which floor they are going to or let them take care of it?

4) Similarly, if someone else gets on before you and hits their floor, are you supposed to awkwardly stick out an arm into their personal space and punch your floor or wait until they ask where you are going?

5) Everyone judges everyone depending on the floor s/he gets out on, also, by what s/he is wearing since there is nothing else to do in an elevator besides scrutinize the company while you pretend to be disinterested and removed.

6) Eye contact.  It happens.  And when it does, you can't walk away.  You just have to stay there.  Next to each other.