Michael is on the road again, doing what he does and riding in elevators with strangers who aren't as strange as they could be.
Elevator kid November 19
The elevator door opened on the third floor where I was staying this morning in Jacksonville. I hadn’t wanted to negotiate the staircase because my arms were loaded behind my coffee and I didn’t choose to spill it all over my fresh shirt. I mean, who rides downstairs anyway if he doesn’t have an excuse. A curly haired kid popped out. Three years old. Maybe four. All alone. The door lingered open.
“You want company?” he said (or, I should say, declared) as he popped back in and pressed the close door button and then the one directing us to the ground floor. He stood back and flashed an ear-to-ear engaging smile. His next words were Deja vu. “What’s your name? I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”
The comment took me back to maybe 1984 or perhaps ‘85. My daughter Sarah. Three or four years old, she then. Her mother, Laura, and I had instructed her on more than one occasion not to talk to strangers. But Sarah, bless her heart, was loquacious and gregarious. Not just one. Both. Not willing to have her nature stifled she had come up with the solution - a variant to that of Elevator Kid. She would ask, “Are you a stranger, because I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”
Strange, huh? As I said, Deja vu. All over again, huh? So much for that.
Back to Elevator Kid. Sorta white but with beautiful kinky hair. Mixed race. I had seen him upon my arrival last night burning endless energy chasing and screaming around the patio area with a band of similar aged minnows. All were of mixed race. Two white moms sat nearby at a table chatting and smoking and occasionally barking warnings at the kids, prime among which was “Stay away from the pool.”
There was a reason for this. In the lobby while checking in I had read a sign, eight by ten in bold font (perhaps Almie), declaring “POOL AND HOT TUB TEMPORARILY CLOSED FOR SERVICING. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE” The sign had been posted, no doubt, at least three years prior. Witness, the pool - large and deep - was caked with mud and leaves and hadn’t contained water in recent memory. Ditto the hot tub. To have fallen in possessed no threat so gentle as drowning. Life and limb were at peril. Amazingly, no fence or rope barrier had been installed to ward off the inattentive. This was a lawsuit begging for its moment. The kids played on with dispassionate disinterest, mom’s periodic admonitions notwithstanding. White noise….. Now I was in the elevator with one of those kids.
To him the elevator was akin to a carnival ride. I completely got it. As a kid of his age, I frequently rode up and down the escalators at the local Sears and Roebuck. We stayed away from the elevator because the stern-mannered operator of same didn’t view his responsibilities as including those of providing recreational opportunities for unsupervised kids. May as well have been a palace guard.
“Is that a computer?” the kid said, pointing at my shaving kit. “No,” I responded not knowing how to elaborate on the topic to a tyke of that vintage.
“What’s your name?” he next asked.
“Michael.”
“Why?” he said.
Who on earth, I thought, asks why you are named as you are? “My mother liked that name.”
“Oh.” The elevator stopped and he ran out, trailing off his last comment: “Bye.”
Yeah. “Bye to you too,” I thought but not voicing it. He was gone with the wind. He hadn’t talked to a stranger. Nor had I.
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