Tag Archives: OTIS

No, it’s not what you think. It’s what gymnasts yell to their team members to “stick” a landing on a vault, floor exercise, dismount. It means bend your knees, look as if you meant to do what you did, rise up and elevate your arms and look at the judges and wave to the crowd.

If you take a step you’ll be penalized but if you fall on your face or on your butt it’s better to take a step. So, stick it.

Next is stuck. I took our dog Zoe out this evening, re-filled her water bowl and headed out without her, keys still in the door and ran into neighbors at the elevator. I had recycling to take out and was going to a local market to buy my husband his favorite frozen pizza as he’s coming in shortly after a long flight home.

Seconds after I bid adieu to my neighbors I hit the number for recycling, the elevator doors closed and it lurched and its computer went down. Thirty minutes later it lurched again. My cell would not work and my husband was on a plane, anyway. I was in intermittent contact with the elevator phone people.

Forget the high school days of stick it! This was just an old lady stuck alone with her recycling in an elevator, for an hour before anyone came to rescue me. I was four feet down and ten feet from our home when Mr. Otis came and opened the doors.

The first thing he said was “I’m going to close these doors and bring you up.” I replied “No way anyone is going to close these doors on me again.” He jumped down to lift me and the staff member that found me, J, held out his hand. I put one leg up and J pulled me. Thanks!

After playing with our dog and our neighbor’s grandkids I went home and started shaking. I had told the elevator operator/phone support (no cell phone service in the elevators) that if the #4 elevator kept jumping up and down I wrote a draft will yesterday and to tell my husband it’s in Word, the most recent document.

Guess what? I stuck it. Through dropping up and down I kept my knees bent for shocks and never fell or even took a step forward. Later I called my brother-in-law and told him to ask our nephew, nearing teen years so we’ll lose him forever, what to do if he was stuck alone in an elevator.

God bless him, he said “sit down.” The operators had me doing so many things inside that I could not do so. My husband just took the dog out, on the only working elevator for 30 stories of folks. It turns out others have been stuck in this elevator over the past few days and it was supposed to be turned off today. It wasn’t and it was hot in there and I didn’t know that the other one is sketchy as well. We have a number of floors here.

We also have pregnant ladies, elderly and disabled residents who need an elevator. I’m sure they’ll fix them tomorrow as there will be one elevator for movers and another for people who live here. The movers are more important.

And as the late, great Walter Cronkite would have said, And that’s the way it is, date…. Dee

ps No longer stuck.