Monday, May 25, 2015

Growing Up In the Race Divide (part 6b)

So... The elevator...

And, yes, you should go back and read 6a for context.

The elevators were jammed every morning with teenagers waiting until the last possible moment to leave and, yet, still get to the convention on time. That first morning, it was something like a 10-15 minute wait just to get on the elevator. Being that we were on something like floor 887, the stairs were not an option. Of course, by "elevator" I mean the main elevators that were just off of the lobby area, basically, the "center" of the hotel.

However, either in looking for the ice machine or just looking around the first night, I discovered that there were other elevators. Or, at least, one other elevator. It was at the end of the wing our room was on, well away from the central elevators. The second morning, I suggested that we should try that elevator instead. What was the worst that could happen, right? That it would also be crowded?

And I had to convince everyone! Seriously, what's with having to convince everyone all the time? Okay, I didn't have to convince the girl since she was just, I don't know, along for the ride. I think she actually just lived right outside our hotel door since she was always there waiting for us every morning when it was time to leave, and that's where we left her every night. I seriously don't think anyone knew where her room was.

So we went down to the other elevator, and it was completely empty! No line. No other people at all, in fact. [Why do people always argue with me about these things? I will never know.] So we pushed the button, waited the moment for the elevator to arrive, got in, someone pushed the button for the first floor... and that's when things got interesting.

As soon as the door started to shut, there was a voice from down the hall, "Hold the door! Hold the door! My granny's coming. My granny's coming." Now, the elevator wasn't just at the end of the hall. The end of the hall turned about 30 degrees so that the elevator was facing a window that overlooked the city rather than a blank wall across the hall, which meant that you couldn't see down the hall without actually stepping out of the elevator and looking to the left. But the voice was decidedly childlike. Jeff reached out and stopped the door from closing.

An eight- or nine-year-old boy appeared in front of the elevator. A skinny, little black boy... wearing a tuxedo. A black tuxedo with red, canvas high-top basketball sneakers and a red baseball cap. To say the least, he was adorable. "Hold the door! My granny's coming!"

The door, though, didn't like being held and was fighting against Jeff's hand, so Jeff, being the brilliant college student that he was, decided to "stop" the elevator. By "stop," I don't mean that he pushed the button to hold the doors open or anything like that; by "stop," I mean that he pushed the big, red, emergency "stop" button. Before anyone could do anything about it or even think that we should do anything about it. An alarm sounded.

Bob was gone. I mean that very literally; he was just gone.

If you've been reading this whole series, Bob lived in the neighborhood around our church with his grandmother and his father. It was a big house, one that I'm sure had been very nice when his grandmother had first moved into it something like 60 years earlier. But the neighborhood was in as much of a state of neglect as the house, which is to say that it wasn't, hmm... It wasn't what you'd call safe. So, when the alarm went off, Bob ran so fast, we didn't even see him leave the elevator. [Yes, he did that in front of the girl, whom, if you remember, he had a crush on.] He just wasn't there anymore, and there wasn't even a cloud of dust with the word "zoom" hovering in it to mark where he'd been.

The little boy's eyes were huge, like the proverbial "as big as saucers" kind of eyes. Jeff literally grabbed me and the girl and carried us out of the elevator, almost under his arms, as it were, and said, "Go!" As we came out of the little alcoved corner where the elevator was, we saw Bob way down at the other end of the hall peeking around the corner at us. And, when I say "way down," I mean "way down." The other end of the hall was a good 50 or 60 feet away, and Bob was all the way down there before we'd gotten all the way out of the elevator.

But Bob was not the only one we saw. Coming down the hall was the smaller duplicate of the boy at the elevator. He was probably about four, had on a black tux with red, canvas, high-top basketball sneakers and a red baseball cap. It was like adorable overload with his slightly chubby cheeks. He was saying something like, "What's happening, Granny?" to a short, large black woman in a big, flower dress, and she was saying as we passed, "There go those white boys, done playing in our elevator." Or something to that effect.

Despite the fact that the... incident was definitely user error, we never went back to that elevator and suffered through the long wait times at the regular elevators for the rest of the trip. However, that might have more to do with what happened later...

20 comments:

  1. I had to read that last part twice - that was the black elevator? Wow, that just seems so foreign now.
    Hilarious that he hit the wrong button!

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    1. Alex C: The thing is is that I don't actually know. I mean, it wasn'y labeled or anything because that would be illegal. All I know is what happened and what was said.

      And it was pretty funny, but the thing that has always made me laugh is how Bob just vanished.

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  2. Yeah, this was pretty subtle, but I'm getting the idea that this was "the black elevator." Which is especially sad if dear granny thought you guys were just being dicks and didn't realize your pal was actually trying to help.

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    1. ABftS: Yeah, we were just a bunch of white hooligans in a fancy hotel.

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  3. If that was the "black" elevator, normally it would have a sign saying something stupid like "Colored Only." Or not. When my mother-in-law was a young woman during the '50s, she visited the South for the first time. She got on a bus and sat in the back. The bus didn't move. The driver shouted to her, Girl, you need to move up front, or you're gonna cause a riot.

    She moved. It had never occurred to her that she shouldn't sit in the back of the bus. No sign separated the white section from the black section.

    Love,
    Janie

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    1. Janie: That's the problem with things that are just "understood;" when you have someone come in from outside of the system, there's no understanding.

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    2. Yes. I've moved so many times and been forced to become accustomed to different mores.

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    3. Janie: There should be a handbook of "understood" things for people when they move.

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  4. Bob was probably afraid of getting blamed for something. I probably would have taken off, too.

    How weird that there was a "separate" elevator. Thankfully I've never seen something like that, but maybe that's because now people refuse to admit when anything is racist.

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    1. Jeanne: Oh, yeah, I know. Don't be the one left standing there. If you didn't do anything, you're going to catch the blame.

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  5. When I was very young,I recall seeing in the South restrooms and water fountains designated for "Colored Only" so a separate elevator might not be a complete surprise, though if they were allowed to stay in the hotel the separate elevator seems illogical.

    But it's a funny story. I always get confused by the elevator buttons and more than once I've seen the doors close on people coming to get on and I couldn't figure out how to open them. I'm kind of dumb like that sometimes. It did allow me to ride the elevator with less of a crowd though.

    Arlee Bird
    A to Z Challenge Co-host
    Wrote By Rote

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    1. Lee: It was the 80s. It would have been illegal for them to just not allow people to stay in the hotel if they had the money to do it.

      And it was pretty funny. Jeff never did live that one down.

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  6. I really am enjoying these posts. But a cliffhanger? SHEESH. I'm so used to binge-watching that I no longer like cliffhangers.

    Still, it's good.

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  7. Briane: Technically, this is not a cliffhanger since I actually gave you the full story arc of this story. Now, if I'd stopped just as Jeff pushed the button and the alarm went off, that would have been a cliffhanger.

    Which did, actually, cross my mind.

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  8. I am the person who hits every button that shouldn't be pushed, travel roads that shouldn't be traveled, and where there are warnings--I do the opposite. All because, and this is just my theory, when a sign says do not enter, push vs. pull or on vs. off, my brain says to oppose the direction. I'm sure there is a medical or psychological (nice) term for this. I just call it being awkward and distracted.

    This is a interesting series of events. Comical, too. These would make an entertaining book of shorts.
    Teresa

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    1. Teresa: My wife can't tell left from right; I wonder if it's related.

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  9. Great story. I can't help being curious about the tuxedos and red sneakers.

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    1. TAS: I've always wondered about that. Maybe it was for a wedding?

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  10. The boys sound adorable. :) I was certain until the end that it might have been a staff elevator, because staff use their own... but yeah, guess I was wrong there. :P

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    1. Alex H: Staff elevators, in my experience, aren't generally accessible to guests. We did think about that because of the weird placement. I don't know; nothing about it makes good sense.

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