The Thing About Elevators

Psy knows.

After living in the lab for some time now, I have reverted to being that boring, unsexy, studious SLC me, who only knew how to, as my friends not-so-fondly recall, "eat, study and wash his bloody clothes." Well, in my defense, I had to in a way; our school's Dhobis always had this weird way of integrating an amazing amount of repulsive scent to our clothes. you know.. that aweful, disgusting  rotten smell of a t-shirt that didn't dry well? yeah that, just thinking about it makes me want to throw up. *coughs*

That and also because I usually missed out on Dhobi days. I wasn't the most responsible guy, nope.

So yeah, since I am back to my not-so-sexy way of lifestyle, I have had to make quite a number of visits to the local restroom which, sadly, isn't on the same floor as the laboratory. To narrow it down to you, there are three..no two short ways to have access to total bliss. One way is to open yourself out to nature, get on a couple of stairs, reenter the building and get straight down to business. Given that it's Korean winter right now, you would imagine that would be the last thing on my mind. 

And you have it spot on there (like a spot so dark that Arial detergent wouldn't dare clean it out...alright, bad joke) 

The next though, is taking the elevator. Now here's the thing; every time i seem to ride that elevator to the first floor (our lab's located in B1), I happen to surprise people. Not that i mean to but I can understand that the last thing you want to see when the elevator door suddenly opens is an indian looking chap wearing half pants in flipflops, carrying a bottle of almost-done shampoo in his hands without even bothering to carry a towel. They just open up their eyes and then shut it to hide their eminent surprise but their faces all return the code: 

"Why the f*** is he here?"

"and why the hell is he in his shorts?"

Well, it's really not the first time elevators have been a source of pure discomfort for my stranger friends and your local blogger. Having had lived in the dormitory for a while, let's just say for far too long, in the 9th floor in that 919D building, I didn't have much choice but to take the elevator. (I did decide to take the stairs once but promised myself to never, ever do that again.)

I think it was this chilly winter evening when I was making my way down to the dorm's convenient  store, this totally unknown, never seen before guy  took the liberty to share the small, squeezed out space between us. Having been inside and the doors closed in front of us, he got all cozy and sharp shooted a heavy dose of his silenced natural gas. 

Now look, if you look into my tiring eyes and ask me how I could be sure if that was him and not me, then well, you don't need to study rocket science to know that, do you? If I am not the one letting out weird worse-than-Dhobbi's-clothes-smell inside that forsaken space, it has to be the other guy. 

That wasn't the end of it. As he realized that he might be penalized for his Nazi like acts and that he might have to stand trial for suffocating an innocent, "i am just going down for some chips" nepali guy, he decided that he might as well open the elevator door for some fresh air and take the stairs down instead. He duly obliged. 

The core problem, however, remained. But before I can go anywhere further down the story, I am going to give you a short trip back to middle school science and explain how farts and humans who "walk" after farting work.

When someone lets out his/her obnoxious air out and walks out to "walk" away from the smell, it actually does more harm than good. The trail you think you are spreading around will instead follow you. How? As you whistle and walk and pretend to be innocent, the vacuum that you create  behind will suck up the surrounding air. what air? you guessed it right.

Unfortunately, this time, the elevator door decided to shut mother nature down and put me in a very uneasy position instead. Just when I had started to see bright lights of heaven, the elevator door opened again. 

Another stranger comes right in.

Oh shit. i think. 

As the elevator goes down (we must have had the slowest elevator in the whole wide world), he smells something fishy. His obvious reaction was that of nausea but then what he does takes me by surprise.

He looks at me. 

I was telepathically trying to explain the situation but he seemed to be speaking another telepathic language so in the very end, he muttered sounds which very much sounded like "disgusting" and left with me having to plead my innocence. Telepathically of course. 

So yeah, I am not sure how I am going to end this but if you are someone who doesn't visit the bathroom in the morning, I highly recommend you to make that a habit. i am telling you, you will be surprised.