I don't wanna make her cry (because I like giants)

When I was in university I lived in a downtown apartment building, walking distance to all the big important offices where all the big important oil guys worked.  My dad was one of those big important oil guys -- but in spite of his title and his suit and tie he did not have a big important oil man attitude.  Now that he is retired and spends his days in jeans and cardigan sweaters I recognize him more easily.  But I knew him then, too, my dad.  I was pretty sure (I still am pretty sure) that he was the smartest man in the whole world.

He worked in an office about thirty floors up in a huge tall building, the kind of building with security guards by the elevators, with soft plushy carpet in the hallways, where everyone talked very quietly, where everyone looked quite serious.  I loved my dad's office, in particular I loved the rolls of stickers, red arrows and multicoloured dots that he would affix to maps, because in those days drilling maps were made of paper.  Even though I was in my twenties, too old to want to play with stickers, I wanted to play with those stickers.  And he would let me.

Sometimes I would meet him there at the end of his workday and we would go for coffee before he went home to suburbia, and me to my apartment.  The security guard by the elevator in the lobby came to know me and stopped asking me where I was going the way he did at first, because I was so obviously out of place in that fancy building.

For some reason at that time, I was under the impression that elevators were soundproof, particularly the ones in my dad's building... because of their solid steel construction, perhaps, and especially because of the detectable change in air pressure when the doors whooshed closed, I felt as though entering the elevator was the same as entering a hermetically sealed vault.  Nothing could get out or in until the doors opened.  Not even sound.

And what would you do in a soundproof chamber if you had access to one?

I looked forward to the doors closing behind me in the lobby and would hope they wouldn't open again until I reached my dad's floor, allowing me the maximum time and minimum interruption to play.  I would sometimes sing (loudly) but more often I would scream.  Not primal-scream type stuff, not angst-ridden angry screaming.  Just making noise with my voice because I lived in a downtown apartment where one couldn't make noise, because I'm not usually a noisy person, because I wanted to hear what I sounded like when I did that.  So I would try to match my tone to the hum of the elevator, or to a note in my head, and sometimes I would practice diaphragmatic control, trying to keep the sound strong and steady for the entire thirty floors.

Usually when I arrived on his floor, I would walk down the hall to my dad's office, say hello to the receptionist, and meet him in his office.  But on the day that I learned elevators are not soundproof he was waiting for me in the hall right outside the elevator.  Like always, I stopped screaming as soon as the elevator bell dinged, watched the doors slide open.  And there was my dad standing at the entrance to the elevator looking wide-eyed and worried.  He asked if I was alright.  I said I was and asked him why he was in the hall instead of in his office.  He told me he had been walking down the hall between offices when he heard me screaming all the way up from the ground floor and thought something horrible was happening.

It was a great disappointment that day to learn that elevators are not soundproof.  I stopped screaming in his elevator, I also stopping doing it in the elevator to my apartment.  I don't think I have screamed in an elevator ever since that day, but every time I use an elevator I still always, always want to.




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