Change

I stepped into the rickety elevator and let my bag slam to the ground. Who had ever convinced me to take up teaching bowling as a career? Oh yeah, that's right. I sighed and leaned my head against the wall. Well, I guess Denny hadn't quite left me high and dry when she fired me. She had pestered me for weeks about taking up bowling as a side gig, she said I was so good at it and wouldn't I just love the extra income? I snorted. Extra income? Yeah right. They paid me diddly squat for the steady, and might I add well done, evening shifts that leaked well into the night on many occasions. Denny had been so happy when I told her I had gotten the bowling job. Her eyes lit up and everything. 

"Oh, yay, Robert! Congratulations!" she had said.

 I started planning to ask her on a date right then. The next day, right before I asked her out, she told me that they had decided to let me go. Some lie about a change in economy and needing to lay people off and maybe I could get my job back when things settled. They'd call me. 

I did not ask her on a date. 

No one else that I talked to got fired.

I gathered my things and left the office in a daze. Sure, helping make rockets and stuff like that wasn't as glamorous as it sounded, but still. I had enjoyed it, at the very least. Maybe I hadn't been as good as I thought. Like when you think you're killing it at Mario Kart and look at what place you're in and realize you rank 12 out of 12. Maybe I just hadn't been good enough… 

And now? What kind of life was I leading? Boarding an elevator death trap in a run-down 12 story apartment building at 2 AM, looking forward to another graveyard shift teaching jerks how to bowl?

I looked above the elevator doors to see what floor I was on, this elevator moved like molasses through honey. The monitor glowed with a green number one and I sighed as I realized I hadn't pushed a button. A deeper sigh escaped from somewhere inside me. There seemed to be an endless well of them these days. I punched the button for the twelfth floor and felt the car floor begin its ominous shaking as the shabby elevator rumbled to life and I found myself staring at the buttons. The square buttons extended in one very straight line from waist height to head height, my head height, at any rate. Because of this, the owners of the apartment building always put tall people with no children on the top six floors. Very tall people got floor twelve. I measured in at about 6'3" (they actually measured their tenants) and I got assigned floor twelve. At the time, that had felt like icing on the cake. Being forced to move into a crappy apartment and being assigned the twelfth floor. Just a cherry on top of the worst cake ever.

When I got fired, I had been able to maintain my mortgage for about 5 months. I sold my car, my very nice car, to pay for the last month because I already had too many loans and nobody would give me another. My prayers availed me nothing. I was sure God had seen the mess I made and decided He could do nothing. The only thing I ever felt after prayers was an increasing need to get a new job. But there was no point in looking. And just quitting would have been financial death. I had chosen, instead, to move out of my house before the bank foreclosed. I had found this place. Cheapest rent for miles, and for someone who makes an hourly wage of less than minimum (how could that even be legal, again?), cheapest sounded good. $300 a month should have sounded too good to be true. I should have known better. 

The owners never fixed anything because they never raised the rent and so never had any money leftover after bills (or so they said) to fix anything. And so I became the handyman formy own apartment. Which quickly turned into the handyman for the whole building. I had started with my own floor and when news spread that I was a decent handyman, I got women crying on my filthy doormat begging for help. Children who had sprinted up flights of stairs asking meto fix a toilet before their mom got home and got angry, three people slid notes under my door and left their own doors wide open for me to go fix a problem. I never saw those people, not once. I even got a few burly motorcycle guys asking for help. They always had light problems that they had tried and failed to fix. Every single one of the lights had electrical problems, mostly corroded wires from leaks in the ceiling. To date, I had fixed three faucets, seven toilets, two fridges, and 48 broken lights. Some of them more than once. I'd even fixed the elevator buttons twice, they'd get stuck and just quit working. I really needed to charge for all the repairs I did. I usually footed the bill for any extra wires and tools that were needed. Maybe they'd hire me on as the handyman here. That wouldn't be too bad. I shook my head. I was too exhausted from bowling to be a full - or even part - time handyman too. 

My eyes drifted away from the buttons and fell on the poster I had taped there six or seven months ago when I had moved in. 

Tony's! Pizza and Bowl!

Now with free instructor upon request!

(Schedule 2 days in advance!)

I cringed. What purpose does an exclamation mark serve if every sentence has one? Even the parenthetical sentence had one, for goodness sakes! The free instructor sentence made me angry. They had said they'd pay my wage if I taught for free. I told them I expected $10 an hour and they had agreed, in writing, even. I had never seen anything over $7 an hour since I got my first paycheck. Every time I argued, they said, "oh, that's a mistake. Sorry! We'll send a note to management". I am convinced that they never even wrote the note. And they never let me go to talk to management myself. I quit arguing after 5 months, when I lost my house. More prayers unanswered and a growing pile of pay stubs that were proof. Last time I drove by my house, a little family had been having a picnic on an immaculate lawn. It had never looked like that when I lived there. At least it was in good hands. 

The elevator shuddered to a stop and the rumble stopped. I looked at the monitor. 8. Eighth floor. I sighed. Here we go again. The elevator regularly got stuck between floor 8 and 9. I was a bit concerned that the rumble had stopped, though. Usually the elevator got stuck for a second up to a minute and then flung you up past the ninth floor. The tenants who lived on the ninth floor usually got off on the 8th or 10th floor and took the stairs. I was convinced that one day I would have to walk all the way up to the twelfth floor. If that day ever came, I would sleep on the couch in the lobby. Or maybe the floor was cleaner.

I bumped my head against the wall a few times, would I be stuck in this life forever? As my head hit the wall a fourth time, the elevator dinged and the door slid open on a blank wall. I peeked out the door and sighed. There was a six inch gap between the elevator and the wall.

"That's safe," I muttered as I looked down into the dark abyss. "It's like something from a horror movie".

I shook my head and punched the "door close" button. This elevator was old enough that the button actually worked. A bit too well, actually. It had the nasty habit of giving in to the wishes of rival siblings and would catch fingers or arms of the other sibling in the door. So far, this had never led to too many problems. For children or the owners of the building. Nobody living here had enough money to sue anybody and still come out on top financially. We usually just shrugged and moved on.

The doors slid shut with a screech to wake the dead and I began to wonder if I might be here for a while. I leaned against the wall and slumped to the floor. Interesting things always happened when I was far too tired to appreciate them. I pulled out my phone and checked the time. 2:30 AM and my phone at 2%. That was fine, my phone could live for at least an hour on two percent. And that was if I was streaming YouTube videos the whole time. Of course, I didn't know how long it had been on 2%. Because after 2%, my phone died. 1% didn't exist. And then I realized, today marked one year since I had been fired. Happy anniversary, Misery.

I rested my back against the wall and closed my eyes, I was so exhausted. Might as well just sleep here. The feeling of the elevator flinging past the ninth floor would wake me up.

I woke up sometime later to the feeling of the elevator moving. It took me a whole minute to realize that it was falling and by the time I had the sense to freak out, it had screamed to a halt. The abuse to my ears was still ringing when I pulled out my phone and checked the time. 3:47. Great, this was just ridiculous, how long would I be stuck here? The monitor above the door flashed green and I saw the number 3 before the elevator car was suddenly plunged into darkness. Power out. I sighed and rubbed my face. I could feel the car inching downward. 

And I was angry. One thing after another. Failure after misfortune after bad luck. My job, my house, Tony's!, this apartment building, my stupid heavy bowling bag, my car, this elevator, and now I was going to die trapped in an elevator in the dark with my bowling bag and a sign from Tony's!. 

I stood up and blindly reached for the sign, tearing it from the wall and ripping it to shreds. I felt around for my bowling bag with my foot and when I found it, I kicked it. It hurt abominably, but I didn't care. I was done with being trapped. Trapped in an elevator. Trapped in an unfair job. Trapped in this misery I was calling life. And all of them seemed to be spiralling downward. Things needed to change and I was going to make it happen. 

I stopped and pulled out my phone. At floor three, it wasn't very likely that I would die from the elevator hitting ground floor, even at free-fall speed. It was time to plan my life. I wasn't just going to sit back and let it happen to me anymore. Maybe that's what God was trying to tell me all those times I felt like leaving my job and then let misery stop me. Maybe God knew that I could make the change and He was letting me find my own power.

On my phone, I opened a notes app. I saw old notes-to-self about things I should try or things I should do again. One note popped out at me. It simply said, "maybe you should try being a handyman. You like fixing things." That was it! Should needed to be a thing of the past. I opened a new note and started typing. 

To do tomorrow:

~ Go to the police station and see what can be done about my stolen paycheck money. 

~ Quit Tony's! and look for different work doing something I enjoy. Like being a handyman.

~ When I have enough money, MOVE. Maybe get my old house back? Or move to a different city entirely?

As I typed this last sentence and hit save my phone died. The elevator lights slowly faded back on. It felt like a mic drop. The elevator rumbled to life and started its slow climb back to the top. I looked at the monitor and saw a green number 5 flicker into being. I smiled. It looked like I hadn't sunken as low as I thought.