The Elevation of Conversation

This post contains strong language and an old dude with a cowboy hat.
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I don't like the elevator.



The elevator is where interesting conversation goes to die. Prior to its untimely death, conversation struggles against it, and does a sort of unseemly convulsion. That convulsion might sound a little like this:



"I'll tell you, I'm glad it's Friday."



or



"The weekend? Too short, as always."



The subject of meteorology is another favorite. "They say its supposed to be nice by the weekend." Which is something that, I now know, is tooooo short-- but at least it will be temperate.


There's something about the forced interaction in a cramped space that makes people inane. I'm no different. I don't know what to do in an elevator. Sometimes, to avoid a conversation with someone i find particularly painful, I will wait--just stand around the corner, mind you--until that person has already gone up or down on the elevator. I've started to become convinced that I could yield to the sad truths of elevator talk, or I could start looking for jobs solely on the first floor of buildings. And then...


He was an old man. The skin below his eyes looked like a sack of bricks--another one added for each year of his already long life. This might normally give him a look of sadness, but he wasn't sad. He was wearing a cowboy hat.



"Good morning!" he said as he ambled aboard the elevator with me. He looked like a short version of John Wayne.



"Good morning," I said, pleasant but tentative.



He exhaled triumphantly. "Haaaaaaaaaaaah."



I wondered if this was his way of telling me today's chance of precipitation.



He pressed the button for his floor. "Ahh. You're going to sixteen, huh? Who's on that floor?"



I told him Blue Cross Blue Shield.



"Huh. You guys still fucking the customer?"



And then something switched in me.



"Yep. Always."



"Man, I don't know how you guys do it. We don't have a chance." Straight-faced, but with a buried smile. He was a happy curmudgeon.



It was his floor. Already. "Alright, you keep at it. Have a good day."



"You have a good day too."



I'm not sure I've ever meant that more in my life.