Metal Box Entrapment.

This was going to start out as a bad day anyway. The city decided to hold its Medieval Festival in Fort Tryon Park the 28th of Sept regardless of the rain that continued to pour all morning. And since I actually had been looking forward to the event after attending on a whim last year, I decided to deal with the rain.

For most people, rain is an inconvenience. You wear a cap, carry an umbrella and all is well. I'm not one of those people. I never have been. I will reschedule appointments due to rain and even make plans to avoid inclement weather. Rain isn't clean. It's gray. Dirty. Wet. Muddy. You get the idea. But since the fair refused to reschedule on account of inclement weather, I was there trying to find the lady that I bought jewelry from a year ago. Hours of searching later, I realized that she was a no show. Clearly she was one of those rain-hating people. And while I believed, if I'm outside, she should be outside, who am I to get her to leave her home to be surrounded by wet hay and horses.

Exactly. So obviously going home was the next best thing. It would've been fine. We were looking forward to anyplace that was warm and served warm drinks. A flight of wet soaked stone stairs, mud-tracked, a few unwelcomed whiffs of stale horse barns and some time later we get into the elevator to the awaiting subway. Except during our descent, the elevator lurches and stops. A couple of minutes later we realized that we weren't going anywhere. The scene was just like a movie. A hypersensitive elderly lady, a mother of two boys- a child of 7 and an autistic teenager, a nurse with a heavy accent that knew only two volumes- loud and very loud and my friend and I.

We called for help and the operator went to send someone to look for a key and call 911. Nevermind the fact that at this festival there were police cops crawling everywhere. Still 30 min later we got nothing, no word of the impending help and the autistic teenager was yelling and stomping and pounding on the elevator doors as his younger brother burst into tears. The nurse tried to soothe him which didn't help as she was "yelling" words of encouragement as the mother tried to get her son to listen to music. The hypersensitive elderly lady? Anytime the teen got close to her, she hyperventillated and started to scream "Go away! Get away from me!" Lovely. Now where exactly was Keanu Reeves and why isn't he here to save me?

The result? 45 minutes later the FDNY arrived and managed to pry open the elevator doors and through an fire escape staircase, we climbed 12 floors to get out. Only to go back on the elevator to the subway. There is no glass large enough to drink away this incident.