Kristie's Traumatic Tale

Kristie sent me an email this morning that was simply to entertaining not to share. As a little back story, Kristie has probably the worst anxiety about "dangerous" situations than anyone I know. When we used to carpool together she had a minor panic attack anytime a plane flew overhead. Nevertheless, I think this situation would've freaked me out a bit too.


So this morning I get to work, the sun is shining, I’m having a really good hair day, my purple shirt looks amazing, my ass looks sick in these pants and overall its a pretty great morning. I get to work early, make some calls to my speakers for next week and then decide to go down to get some Starbucks. So I get on the elevator and for once I’m the only one in there. (Let me pause for a second to say that I HATE riding in elevators with other people because I feel like I should always say hello or compliment the other people on something random because standing in such close quarters makes me uncomfortable…so needless to say being the only one in the elevator is pretty exciting for me and is only adding to my awesome day.) Anyway, I am in this elevator and I hit the button to go down to the lobby when all of a sudden this elevator starts going WAAYYYY too fast. Immediately I think that of course, that the elevator broke and I’m going to plummet from the 39^th floor where my office is to the basement level where the elevator will crash and I will probably die. So obviously I start to freak out. The first thought in my mind is to start pushing every emergency button possible to stop the elevator. I start pushing literally every button and nothing is happening. Then I think to myself, well this isn’t working you should brace for impact. My mind then races through all the various poses that would best sustain life upon elevator crash and I decide to go with getting on my knees hugging the hand rail while I continue to push emergency buttons. So there I am, alone on my knees in a crashing elevator with my eyes closed frantically pushing every single button on the panel. This ride feels like its about ten minutes long. I mean, I am LITERALLY on my knees here trying to remember any movie with an elevator crash to see how I could possibly survive when all of a sudden, DING, lobby. The doors open, I gracefully stand up and slink out acting like I didn’t just have a minor heart attack and a major anxiety attack and there are two workers out there waiting for me. “Is everything alright? We saw that you pushed the emergency button and heard you screaming” (for the record I was hardly screaming, AT MOST I said “oh god” a few times in a semi-frantic voice.) Now I’m just really embarrassed so I try and act cool and say, “What? Ha, no I’m fine. I was on the phone; I must have pushed the button with my bag but thanks for checking.” They just smiled and I went to get a coffee…I will never ride the elevator alone again.