Taste the concrete.

I came back from lunch today, and the back elevator wouldn't come down to the ground floor. Apparently, someone was holding it on another floor. If my office was on any other floor of the building, that wouldn't matter, but in our building, there's only one elevator that actually goes all the way to the top floor - our floor: the back elevator.

I cursed whoever it was that was holding it and went around to the other elevators. I took one up to the next-to-the-top floor then entered the dark and sinister stairwell to walk the last flight of stairs. I jerked the door from the stairwell open and stepped forward...into a pitch black room. Seems there's an extra room between the stairwell to the lighted hallway leading to our office, and the extra room has no lights. That's not creepy.

Good thing I have no imagination or I would've immediately thought to myself, "Anyone could be hiding in here, and I wouldn't be able to see them. And if they decided to, say, attack me, it's possible no one would hear me since the entire office is located on the other side of the building." Oh wait...I have a really great imagination. Damn.

So, since I was appropriately freaked out mere seconds after jerking open the door, I gripped my styrofoam cup full of Diet Coke in my right hand, and held my purse against my side with my left hand and rushed really quickly, full steam-ahead through the totally dark room. I aimed for the light around the door on the other side, almost there, thank God I didn't run into anyth--BAM!!!!

I'm sure there's a reason someone built a concrete step three feet from the door. But that's not the thought that entered my head when my new pumps slammed into that step, throwing my whole body forward into the floor. I tried to catch myself with my right hand (since I'm right handed), but it had a 20-oz styrofoam cup in it. I heard the Diet Coke pouring out of the cup and tried to right the cup while simultaneously scrambling to get up off the floor before it got all over me and wondering if I had bruised my knee. But the Coke kept pouring out no matter what I did.

I groped and found the door knob, pushed open the door, and in the light, I could see that the fall had broken my styrofoam cup...at the bottom. I turned the cup sideways and that stanched the flow of cola. I limped to the bathroom and threw the cup away, wiped off my shoes and inspected the damage. No broken skin, so not too bad. There will likely be bruises tomorrow, but these days I find bruises without even knowing where they come from, so at least I'll know the origin on these.

When I got to the office, I was prepared to rail against whoever it was that had held the elevator and started this whole fiasco. But then I found out that the elevator was actually broken, and one of our delivery guys had been stuck in it for a half an hour. He stole my thunder! How dare he be stuck in a tiny, suspended box for 30 minutes when I have a story to tell about falling in the dark!

Oh well. At least there was no one in the scary, dark room. I know, because if there had been, there's no question they would've laughed out loud when I bit it. I kind of snicker everytime I picture it in my head.

(P.S. This is posting on Thursday. I wrote this on Tuesday, as the date stamp shows, but for some reason it never got posted - maybe I forgot to click on the "Publish Post" button? Couldn't possibly be user error. In any case, no bruising on my knees appeared, but my arms and back have been sore for the last 2 days thanks to my little spill. I'm getting old.)