I do?

Today was a day of elevators.
Today was Freshman Move-In Day at my school, and I was on the move-in crew.  Naturally I saw my share of awkward cram-into-the-elevator-get-to-know-each-other-very-well-in-the-next-few-seconds-haha moments; I won't bore you with those stories.  Especially since I just summed all 549 of them up just now.  What I will tell you is this.
Today I recieved my first serious marriage proposal.  From a complete stranger.
I wheeled my shopping cart into the parking lot, having been told by another crew member that there was a car that needed to be unloaded. 
"Hi!" I greeted the man and two women who were standing next to the open trunk.  "Do you need any help?"  They loaded luggage and bedding into the cart while one of the women explained to me: "We don't know the room number, he's checking in now."  I said that was fine, and we could wait at the car.  We had exchanged maybe a few more sentences before the younger woman said, "Christine, are you married?"
"No, I'm not," I said, figuring she was probably joking.
"Oh," she said, smiling, "I've got someone for you.  Not me!  My brother."
I started laughing.  I thought she was still joking.
"Don't laugh, I'm serious!" she said.  I kept laughing anyway, I didn't know what else to do.  She said, "You are a good person.  He needs someone helpful and compassionate, like you.  Don't laugh, I'm serious!"  She repeated that sentence several times until I calmed down enough to say, "I'm sorry, it's just that this is my first offer of marriage today."  All three of them laughed then. 
"Would you want to marry an African?" she said. 
This, as I'm sure you've figured out, is a question not easily answered.  If I answered yes, I ran the risk of letting the woman pick a date, a church and caterer.  If I answered no, I'd look racist.  I laughed, of course, while I thought.
"Honestly, I haven't thought too much about it," I said.  Not exactly true, but not exactly offensive either.
I thought that was the end of it until she said, "No, but really, give him your number." 
The other woman and man--who I figured out were the parents--started asking me about the school--about classes, meals, where I lived, whether or not I liked it.  We had rather an extensive conversation, because the kid still wasn't coming back.  How long could it possibly take him to check in? I thought.  And where are all the other movers?  How could they leave me alone with this oddly determined woman and these other two who weren't exactly keen on reining her in.  Once, she asked me if I cook my own food, with he look of a lawyer cross-examining a witness.  I told her that I rarely do, that I usually eat in the caf.  She nodded as though that meant something.  Probably trying to figure out how domestic I am.  I was sure I'd failed her test, and felt a little bad about that, but not much.  Then the older woman said, "There he is."
A boy came toward us.  The younger woman called out to him, and when he reached us, said something to him in another language, pointing at me, and then "Be sure to get her number."  Then, and only then, did I realize that this was her brother.  We exchanged tight smiles, and I tried to telepathically send him the message, I am so so so sorry.  Instead, I just asked him, "What room?"  Nothing else was said about his older sister's matchmaking venture until the two of us headed toward the elevator.
"No, but really, give him your number!"

Soon...

I return to the land of elevators.  Maybe then I'll have some new stories!  Maybe my brain will explode.  Or maybe I'll join a traveling circus as the Bearded Lady.  Every road leads to the sea, or something.  I don't know what I'm talking about.

The library has no elevators

But it does have really creepy bathrooms. That's where I am now (the library, not the bathroom).  I'm supposed to be gathering research for a paper that's due on Tuesday, but I am being irresponsible instead.  And normally that's what I do--put off the paper until the night before, sometimes the morning of (I'm not proud of this).  But guess which class this paper is for? 
Reading the Graphic Novel.
The one I wrote about earlier.
The one in which I nearly failed (but actually passed, much to my surprise) the midterm.
Yup.
So instead of actually reading W.J.T. Mitchell's Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, I am typing this and rereading the extensive graffiti on this desk.  I'm half tempted to add to it.  There are the usual names, and frats and sororities and "I love/<3 _____" but someone has written NOW HERE IS  NOWHERE, which I actually kind of like.  Then there's "Prosecutors will be violated," which also wins, in my opinion.  Someone else (or maybe the same person, I don't know) has written "Silence=Death" and "Death=Silence" which is certainly true in some cases.  It also reminds me of things that people would write in my junior high yearbooks, things like "Never change."  Back then, I thought it was so sweet of them to say that, but I have since come to realize that without change, there can be no life, so perhaps my classmates actually wanted me to die. 
Moral of the story: don't try to be productive before you have to be, and don't tell people not to change unless they are insufferable.  I can't in good conscience advocate the violation of prosecutors, however.

Or you could just go around me

The other night, I was carrying food from my room to the lobby floor of the building, so I decided I should take the elevator.  Didn't want to drop the enchiladas all over the stairs.  At the L level, the door slid open and suddenly two girls stood inches away from me.  I was standing against the wall so other people could walk past me into the elevator, but they just stood there in front of me.  They gave me the once-over/slight stink-eye combo ("How dare you be in the elevator when we want to go in?"), but eventually they realized I wasn't blocking the whole entrance. 
Behind them was a guy carrying laundry.  We didn't have a problem. 

At least I saved *him*...

My phone was dying, so I left the safety of my homeworking group of friends to get the charger. I reached the elevator as the door was closing, and in desperation, I punched my thumb at nearly full force into the “Up” button.  Inside was a couple, or a man and a woman anyway, who I assumed were a couple. 

“Just in time,” the guy said.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Well, I saw the door closing, so I just kinda jumped for it.”

“Haha, yeah, I know how that is,” he said. 

A couple of seconds passed, then the woman spoke.

“You’re lucky,” she said to the guy.  “I was just about to moon you.”

There were a few seconds of silence.  I had that nagging feeling of “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Thanks,” the guy said to me.

“You’re welcome,” I replied.

“Oh come on,” she said, speaking to the guy quietly, as if that would prevent me from hearing her, “you would have liked being mooned.”

There were a couple more seconds before we reached my floor, but then the door swung open. 

“Well, good night,” I said. 

“’Night,” they said.  I might have run out of the elevator.

Welcome to the new place!

I started this blog offline as an assignment, but some of my friends suggested I make an actual blog, like, online, where people could actually read it.  I'm assuming this means that they won't read it, but other people should.  But maybe I'm being paranoid. <_<   >_>
Anyway, here are the posts from the assignment, as I wrote them at the time:

10/12/10

As per the assignment for Writing Prose: Nonfiction, I’ll be trying something new for the next two weeks: striking up conversations with people in elevators.  I figure it will be a good challenge for me, since I am quite shy and elevators are just a place where you don’t tend to converse with people you don’t know.  I almost did this for a project in Intro to Sociocultural Anthropology, actually.  And then I changed my mind.  But now is the time.  I can do it. 

10/14/10

BT A Tower elevator is broken.  WHAT.  I live on the sixth floor.  I bet my neighbors think I just came back from a marathon, or maybe they just realize how out of shape I am.  Either way, they can totally hear me wheezing through their walls as I try to drag my sorry ass to my room.  This is not one of my finer moments.

And guess where I just came from.  Failing a midterm.  The midterm for Reading the Graphic Novel.  It was just three extremely short essay questions, and I knew the answers!  But I felt so strange—everything was blurry and nothing made sense, and I ended up staring at the question page for half of the class time.  Annie Raskin kept saying, ”Christine, try to wrap it up.”  “There’s a class in here.”  “Christine, I have people waiting for me in my office.”  And I just kept nodding and blinking down at my test booklet, scribbling away with my mechanical pencil.

“It’s all right,” she said when I finally handed her my booklet.  “Some people are just slow test takers.”  I nodded and tried to smile, hoping she didn’t see the single tear that had leaked out behind my glasses.  What was wrong with me?  I haven’t cried in class since… okay, never mind.  I guess I cry pretty easily. 

So after a trip to the bathroom to make sure I could keep some semblance of composure, I decided it would be a really good idea to get lunch from the caf.  I got mozzarella sticks AND onion rings, as consolation for my truly sucky morning, and walked back to BT.  After I hit the button for the A Tower elevator three times and the number on the display stubbornly remained “4,” I realized what was going on. 

But I survived the stairs.  And now I’m going to eat my lunch and watch Supernatural episodes for the rest of the afternoon—since I can’t bring my laundry down in the elevator now—and feel better.

Later

I’m dying.  I knew getting the onion rings would be a bad idea, and now my stomach is rebelling.  Please, if you find me dead, know that this was not a suicide.  Maybe a cry for help. 

10/20/10

Success!  I have finally done it! 

I was taking the elevator downstairs and when the door swung open, there was this girl standing in front of me who was wearing black lace tights.  If you knew how I felt about socks and tights, you would know this made me happy.  Clearly this meeting was meant to be. 

There was another woman in the elevator and at first I just stood between them, watching the numbers on the display decrease.  Still, I kept thinking, “It’s now or never.  Just say something, you schmuck.”  I glanced down at her legs (I didn’t want her to think I’d been staring) and said, “I love your tights.”

“Thanks!” she said.  She looked down.  “But they don’t go all the way down.  They stop, like, here.”  She pulled down the top of one boot so that I could see the cuff midway down her calf.

“Oh,” I said.  What would I say?  You can plan the beginning of a conversation, but you can’t control where it goes from there.  That’s a whole ‘nother level.  I thought about it for a second.  “But they’re good for boots!”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” she said.  “Or for the summer, when you’re walking around in sandals.”

“Yeah!” I said as the door slid open at L level.  After I got out, I pretended to check whether or not my backpack was on (it was) so that she wouldn’t see me walk straight from the elevator into the stairwell.

Incidentally, if you drag a giant sketchpad into a stairwell, sit down, and proceed to draw, you will get some kind of reaction.