Karl's Original Elevator Story

Before I begin this story, I want to state flatly that no one should ever do this. This sort of reckless, insane behavior could very well get you killed. And when I say killed I mean cut in half. I guess I should also state for the record that danger was one of our favorite pastimes. I repeat: if anybody kills themselves trying any of this, you have only yourselves to blame.
I'm not kidding: this stuff is nuts! Don't do it!!!

Using the Pierpont elevator was a daily practice at the dorm. Yeah, there were only four flights up and yeah, any one with working legs could do it, but there was something quaint about that old elevator that made you want to play with it. I remember one year, close to Holloween, Robb and I painted the whole inside flat black. This comforting darkness lasted for a few days, until someone else painted a dayglow universe in tiny stars inside. Cute, but we wanted pure black, so we painted out his universe.

Mr. Dayglow (who was a really big guy - we were scared shitless) was really upset. I think he was assuaged by being told that he had stumbled into a running feud with some other guerilla painters. After that he laughed. "Silly old college pranks!" Ha ha. Actually we just weren't going to surrender one inch of our unholy darkness. We ruled the night. That Hollween I dressed up like Mr. Death and inhabited the elevator, waiting for innocents to scare. I think I scared some people really bad, but I swear, it was all in fun. I only meant to scare, not scar. Please forgive me, J. C.!

But hey, that wasn't even the dangerous part (even though I deserved mace or a stun gun). The dangerous part was when Robb and I realised that by pushing the emergency stop button 'in between floors' and gently prying the doors open, we could exit (risking cutting ourselves in half) by crawling up on to the next floor, gaining access to the top of the elevator. It occurs to me now that if one person were inside the elevator and one waiting outside, that this could be done with less risk of accidental truncation, but we weren't thinking in such terms.

So we would sit up on top of the elevator and wait for someone to innocently board. Once they were inside we could overide the elevator controls and take them on a random joy ride, even getting so good at operating the overide controls that we could shake the elevator violently. As long as we kept our mouths shut, the effect was extremely unnerving for the rider. Ha ha, big laughs!

Finally, the obvious happened. While we were taking someone up (when they really wanted down), they figured out we were up there and hit the emergency stop at the fourth floor, trapping us inside the elevator shaft. We considered screaming in panic I'm sure, but as luck would have it, another innocent traveller boarded and sent it down again. Somewhat in panic we hit our own emergency stop button, exited, and fled with our tail between our legs. At that moment we had a revelation. We would never do crazy, dangerous stuff again. NOT!!!!

-kf