Living in the Scoot Utopia

As many of you who know me are aware, I suffer from frequent (nightly) nightmares and remember nearly all of my dreams in vivid detail. Most of my nightmares involve one of three things:

• I have committed murder and am about to be caught.
• A tornado is coming and no one will believe me.
• I am trapped in an elevator that is malfunctioning.

The elevator nightmare is my most common. In fact, with only a handful of exceptions, I have had a nightmare involving a malfunctioning elevator every night for at least the past 15 years, probably longer.

Last night was not one of the exceptions.

I was on the elevator in the building I live in and got off on what I thought was my floor. However I first noticed that the hallsways had all been redone with oak panels and when I got to where my apartment should be there was instead a doctor's office. That was when I realized I had gotten off on the wrong floor.

I re-boarded the elevator, which now had about 3 or 4 other prople on it, and it started going up.

The elevator climbed, and climbed, and climbed. As it kept on climbing, we quickly realized that not only had it failed to stop on the floors it was supposed to, it had now gone several floors beyond the actual height of the building we were in and was still continuing to climb. The other passengers began to panic and one of them asked what the hell was going on.

"Oh, the usual," I said. "This happens every time I board an elevator. It'll keep climbing and climbing until it slams into the top of the shaft. Then it will stop, pause for a moment, and then we will plummet to our deaths."

They didn't believe me.

But sure enough, a moment later, the elevator jarred to a stop as it hit the top of the shaft. The car was motionless for a moment as we all glanced at each other nervously. Then the free-fall began, and the other occupants started screaming in terror.

"Don't worry," I said, matter-of-factly. "Like I said, this happens to me every time. The trick is to just make sure you wake up before we hit bottom."

With that, and a little struggle, I slowly opened my eyes and awoke just as I heard the car smash into the bottom of the shaft.

And people wonder why I seem to be so tired every day.