TWO ELEVATOR STORIES

I’m an elevator boy
just trying to get to the top
of life.
—Sprung Monkey’s “Swirl”
— from Surf Dog Records

I’m not too sure where I heard this story or whether I have all the facts straight, but I’ll retell it anyway. A famous black athlete stepped into an elevator at some ritzy hotel and as soon as the doors slid closed, he noticed a white middle-aged woman all by her lonesome tightly clutching her purse. She deliberately avoided making eye contact with him out of fear. I believe he said, “Hello. How are you today?” —perhaps to get her attention, to ease her uneasiness, perhaps he thought his wealth and fame would set him apart from her perception of other black men. However, she did not recognize him, nor did she answer his question. In fact, at the sound of his baritone voice, she stiffened up and hurriedly inched forward, closer to the metallic doors, waiting for the slightest opening to escape his presence.

Now don’t get me wrong, famous athletes (no matter what origin of race) have their own personal demons—don’t we all?—but if she had only looked up she may have noticed that her fears were ungrounded. That is, unless the athlete happened to be Charles Barkley spewing racist venom, or Mike Tyson whining in that tenor voice of his about how she asked for it, or O.J. Simpson talking about his latest golf outing, or Kobe Bryant staring and smiling, or even some unruly white boys from the Duke University Lacrosse Team bragging about their sexual conquests. But the man in question, if I have my story straight, was Michael Jordan.

When I first started working in a prison setting, I wheeled a cart of GED books from my Level II classroom on the second floor to my Level IV classroom on the first floor. The reason for having two different classrooms seemed simple enough: Level IV’s were a higher security risk, and in case of an emergency, the corrections officers could respond faster. In hindsight, this shouldn’t have mattered; it had been a Level II inmate who sexually assaulted a coworker. On the day that I stepped onto an elevator with two black inmate tutors that looked like they were chiseled from granite, they reminded me that I had let my guard down, that no matter how big of a hurry I was in, I should’ve thought about my choices before going into action. As soon as the doors closed, Mr. Robinson, the larger man wearing mirror shades and dangling a toothpick from his mouth, said, “Do you think this was a good idea?” I had been sandwiched between the two of them with my cart blocking my point of egress. They laughed at my predicament and promised that they’d make sure nothing happened to me. I, in turn, said, “You guys are so full of shit. Don’t act like you’re doing me any favors.” But we both understood what needed to be done from that moment forward: I’d take the elevator and they’d take the stairs.

Yesterday, an inmate, unhappy with the parole board’s decision to flop him, assaulted one of the officers I work with. He punched the officer in the face and stabbed him with a pen. Remember: there are hazards with any job, some more than others.