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.
No comments:
Post a Comment