what goes up must come down

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I got on the elevator yesterday  at work to go down (novel idea, right?) to the main floor. My timing was terrible. I got on at the 21st floor. Someone else got on at the 19th floor. Then the 18th. I snickered. Then the 16th. Everybody in the elevator was laughing. I think we hit the 14th floor, too, before making it to base. Thank goodness that elevator doesn't service floors 4-12.

The experience reminded me of another family history classic dealing with elevators.

Background: A long time ago (by which I mean more than 10 years), my dad had a business trip to Dallas, and took his little family with him as a sort of vacation. We stayed on the 18th floor of a really nice hotel (an advantage of business trips). The pool (my main interest) was on the 3rd floor. The hotel was serviced by 3 elevators: two normal ones, and one glass one.
The plot thickens: While my dad was off in meetings, my mother took me and my 3 other siblings to the pool. When we headed back, we obviously pressed the 'up' button and waited for an elevator. My brother Jon wanted to ride the glass elevator one. When the 'normal' elevator came, he didn't get on,which we didn't realize until the doors were closing. Our elevator, for some reason, stopped at one of the 'card-access-only' floors above our floor, and my youngest brother, Jaron, (I think he was only 3 or 4 at the time) thought that it was time to get off, so off he went, and before we could call him back, the elevator took us down to some other floor. We could here him crying as we went down. So my mom got off the elevator to take the stairs up to Jaron, and my sister and I went to the 3rd floor to go back for Jon. By this time Jon had  gone somewhere else, so my sister and I decided to go to our hotel room. Except I got confused this time and when I realized that my sister Rachel was going up in the elevator, I was afraid to get on with her because I thought the elevator doors would close and squish me.
To recap, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US got separated. When my mom went to look for us, we had all gone to other floors, so she had to go to the security desk in her swimsuit and ask that the guards help locate her children. I had actually found both my sister and our hotel room by the time the guard found me, but the point was he had to look.
Really quite the epic game of hide and seek.
the happy family. obviously not in the elevator

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