Planes, Trains and Elevators

I have a new outlook on life, and I'll tell you why. One of my biggest inspirations to actually create a blog is Club Trillion. In a nutshell, it's written by this guy Mark Titus on the Ohio State U basketball team and rides the bench, but tells stories about being a college basketball player. I'm saying this because this post is very similar to the one he wrote about when he was stuck in an elevator. Thanks to Meg O'Neil for the topic choice, it makes perfect sense to blog about a topic and I'm somewhat jealous that you thought of it before I did.

Where do I begin? I guess to give the full layout we'll start with the cast of characters involved. It was yours truly, Matt "The Rat" Rizzini, Sean Mottola, Ryan Urkiel and Quentin Staudt. This magical thing happened this past Tuesday night, and the evening started out nice enough. Myself, Rat, Urk and Sean decided to go to the mall so Sean could by Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 so he could finally fit in with some type of crowd. Matt offered to drive us there since his brother has their car on campus at PC. All was going well, but we had to walk over to the Suites to get the keys from Chris Rizzini. Upon the walk we ran into Quentin, asked him to join us, and simply just said "yeah, sure" and tossed away his ciggarette. The night was still going well even as we picked up the keys from Chris's suitemate Rickey Mansfield. Upon him wishing us a safe trip and begging us to buy him some lube from Spencer's, we decided to take the elevator. It all went downhill from there.

Now I know that when you were a little kid, you did exactly what we were about to do. As soon as the elevator goes down, you would jump up, and for about .00007495 seconds, it felt like you were floating, or even better, wearing moon boots. Since myself and Ryan are basically still little kids when it comes to elevators, we both gave each other a glance and jumped as it went down. Like every time I've done it in my life, nothing happened. Unfortunately, something happened soon after this, and it became the longest 6 floor elevator ride of my life. After seeing how cool me and Urk was by jumping, Matt the Rat obviously had to do the same thing, but of course, before he did, he wanted to be the center of attention and get all of us to jump at the same time. He egged us on and did a three count. I'm not talking about a normal 1-2-3 count, I'm saying that The Rat used his finger for each number, increasing the fingers for each number, so more of like a OOONNNNEEEEEE (point one finger).......TTTWWWWWWOOOOOOOOO (point two fingers)...........THHHHRRRRREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!(point three fingers). Normally, I never questioned not doing anything on the count of three. If someone counts to three the way Rat did while I was on a diving board, I would naturally jump on the count of three. I guess I thought I was on a diving board when I heard number three. Actually, I guess all five of us thought we were on a diving board when we heard three. Sure enough, all five of us decided to jump on the count of three. That's when all hell broke lose. This stupid elevator named Otis2 bounced down and then slightly bounced back up. Then it just stopped. Yep. We actually broke an elevator. We all had one those faces on us like a. We just got caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar, b. just witnessed one of our friends ex-girlfriends come back to our floor to say hi, while said person is hooking up with another girl, 3. like our reactions when we heard that Michael Jackson died, and d. like we were waiting for the last number we needed to complete a bingo card.

So basically the five of us were stuck in an elevator. For the first five minutes or so, we all were questioning what to do. Sean immediately sat down and started freaking out saying "Oh my god, why did we do that? We're such idiots. You guys are so stupid. I knew I shouldn't have done that." I don't know if Sean was trying to blame us for it, but he jumped just as much as we did. We contemplated pressing the button with the firefighter's hat on it, you know, the button that if you were on a field trip and you pressed it you'd be suspended for lunch or something. After arguing about pressing the button or just staying stuck in the elevator until the cows come home, we realized it would probably be safe to press the button, so Matt just poked it like it was silly putty. A voice came on the intercom which sounded like God. That is, if I had to think of God's voice, it would definately sound like it was in an elevator. After asking us if we were okay 14 times, the voice of God told us that help would be on the way. The only thing we could think of was the heat in the elevator. Quentin suggested we just get naked because we would stay cool, and we would really give our rescuers a surprise. We basically all sat down and to pass time, we told Sean that if it came down to it, we would naturally eat him first because he was the tallest, and always drinks those crappy protein shakes that don't work. This somewhat freaked him out, but he settled down when I thought of the bright idea to play a game. I simply asked the question, "If you were stuck on an elevator forever and you could bring 5 things with you, what would they be?", and of course Sean went first. After telling us he wanted a gun to shoot himself, porn, and a change of clothes, the voice of God came back on (thank you God, no one wants to know what else he could have wanted) and told us that the fire department was on the way. This was when we realized we could be in trouble. We then heard a knock on the elevator thinking it was our savior, but it turned out to be Rickey. Turns out we were only about two feet away from making it to the 2nd floor. Again he reminded us to not forget his lube and then for some reason vanished. Ryan and Matt texted their girlfriends telling them they were stuck in an elevator. I thought about calling my Mom to pretend I was in serious trouble but then thought against it. We discussed some classic movies that changed our lives, which consisted of Dennis the Menace, Home Alone and Happy Gilmore, and then a different voice asked us if we were okay, how many there was of us, and if we were all male (yes). Finally, we saw some light as a nice Providence firefighter took a crowbar and opened up the elevator and we jumped down about 9 inches to safety.

I felt like I had just got out of prison. It was definitely the longest 35 minutes of my life. It was so nice to see the 2nd floor lobby of Suites Hall and the rescue party. I was hoping there would be a crowd who were waiting our safe arrival and praying for us, but it was only a couple of RA's, some firefighters, a security guard and Chris Rizzini. The old security guard who I can only say looked like a more well built Bob Barker joked that we were throwing around Ryan in the elevator, only he referred to him as "this little guy", to which we jokingly said yes. After saying that the elevator just stopped (which it did...right?), we thanked our saviors and went to the mall. I had never had a better tasting Johnny Rocket's cheddar bacon double before in my life. After this ordeal, I have a whole new outlook on life. I can see how Travis Barker claims that he had a new outlook on life after surviving a plane crash. It was basically the same thing for me. All of a sudden, the sky looks bluer to me, I find myself smiling more, and New Jersey doesn't seem like such a bad state anymore.

One final note, some people have been asking me if I regret jumping. I don't. I also tried to get a video on my phone of the whole ordeal, but I failed miserably.

Oh, and since I know many people who are jealous about this, I would like to rub it in their faces some more that I saw Brand New in Boston on Wednesday night, and it was sick. If you ever get a chance to see them. Do it.