Push

Elevators bug me.  Although needed, they nonetheless combine experiences better-left alone:  tight spaces, awkward silences, and, of course, the even more awkward forced conversation.

“Kind of hot in here, huh?”

“Well, it is a metal box.”

            If I can, I usually try to take the stairs.

Sometimes, though, you can’t take the stairs, which happened to be the case this past July.

On our way home from Orlando this summer, we meandered over to Panama City Beach.  Avid readers—both of you—are already familiar with my take on the wisdom behind interstate domestic travel.  However, after successfully not losing anybody at Disney World, we looked forward to a few days on the coast to perhaps actually relax before going home.

This was kind of dumb.  We were still in Florida, after all, on one of the most densely populated beaches in North America.  To add insult to injury and perhaps even as part of some karmic vendetta for a recent column, the city was also hosting a giant girls’ softball tournament.

We were staying on the twenty-fifth floor of a twenty-six story building, and although the view from our balcony was lovely, anytime we wanted to go to the beach we had to pack enough stuff to supply a short camping trip.  Also, since every other floor was also full of people wanting to “enjoy” the beach, it took us a half hour to go from our room to our coveted spot in the sand.

Granted, these are all first world problems, but claustrophobia knows no borders, especially when you’re trying to hold three boogie boards and a set of beach chairs under one sunburned arm.  

About midway through our stay in paradise, however, the four of us decided to take an evening stroll.  The din of the day was over, the air cooler, the beach calm.  Time to breath. 

Before continuing, it’s important that I pause briefly to explain that both my kids like to push elevator buttons.  They fight about who receives this privilege and their rivalry has become so intense that we have designed a pattern to ensure that each of them gets to push a button at least once per trip.

It was my daughter’s turn to push the down button, which meant my son had hijacked her turn and scuttled away to avoid getting punched.  She then pushed the down button a few more times, just to be sure, and stood directly in front of the elevator door so she could “rush the box” and snatch his down button turn away from him.  With both of us occupied with scolding him, neither of us noticed when the door opened.

           By the time we did notice, our daughter was already in the empty elevator, and the door was shut.

           Before continuing, it’s important that I pause briefly to make this really rather simple public service announcement:  teach your kids how to run an elevator by themselves.  Our daughter did not possess this skill, because, after all, why would she ever be on an elevator without an adult, right?

I am not good at numbers, but even with my stunted math skills, I quickly realized the potential gravity of the situation.  Eight elevators, twenty-six floors, hundreds of rooms, thousands of people. The prospect for an unhappy ending was quite real.

We panicked.  With my wife screaming orders toward the elevator shaft and terrible thoughts free falling through my mind, I ran down the hallway toward the stairs with a misguided “plan” to stop on each floor.  Before I made it to the door, though, my wife shouted.

“She’s on seventeen!”

A nice lady with a small dog, who was on another elevator that happened to stop on our floor, mentioned, after prompting, that she had indeed seen a frightened little girl moments before. While my wife and son stayed put, the lady and I rode the elevator back down to seventeen where, sure enough, we found my daughter unsettled but safe.

It lasted maybe five minute.  Five horrible minutes, which was more than enough time to convince both of our kids to never again enter an elevator without holding at least one of our hands.

We have all run through the specifics of those moments many, many times, and we always came back to that lady.  Why did she happen to stop on the seventeenth floor, stop again on twenty-five, go back down to seventeen, and not once actually get off the elevator?  Was she just taking her dog out for a walk, and just happen to be at the right blessed place at the right blessed time?  

Or do we consider a more supernaturally grafted explanation?

Elevators still bug me, but this question does not.  Sometimes the obvious button to push goes up.

Sacrifice

Most Americans are OK with abortions, at least under certain circumstances.  According to the most recent Gallup poll, a little over half of us, fifty-one percent, believe abortions should be permissible in cases such as rape, incest, or when the health of the mother is at risk.  While only twenty-nine percent believe abortions should be allowed in any situation, and an even lower percentage, nineteen, believe abortions should be banned entirely, the majority of those polled wind up in this fuzzy middle.

These statistics, perhaps, are not surprising. For many Americans, abortion is a complicated issue involving multiple lives.  What might be surprising, however, is that none of these numbers have fluctuated much in forty years.  Today’s percentages are nearly identical to what they were in 1975, two years after Roe vs. Wade.

Thus, the purpose of this column will not be to persuade you one way or another.  If you’re literate enough to read a newspaper, then you probably already know into which percent you would fit.

Now, granted, I am tempted to use this forum to share with you my own personal views.  I would like to spend a few paragraphs expanding on how I believe that life in general is miraculous and human life is especially sacred.    I could also share with you my own political ideas on the topic.  I could go into detail about how, due to the above mentioned statistics, I think the focus for everyone should be on minimizing abortions as much as possible through education and support for local crisis pregnancy centers.  After all, in a democracy, when over two-thirds of the population believes something should be at least quasi-legal, throwing all your resources behind trying to make it illegal is a bit like trying to plug up a dam with a stick.  We might consider using buckets.

Regardless, I will spare you that column, because in the end, what would happen is this:  those of you who agreed with me would put down the paper and say, “Yep, he’s right,” those who disagreed with me would click on a different link and mutter, “What an idiot,” and both groups would move on to their next moment in time. 

Personally, I think our time is too valuable for that.  We are all too busy to rehash old arguments.  However, I do have a request, and as an English teacher, it is a request born out of a need for clarity. It is the same ask my students often hear:  be precise.

Thus, I would ask that we stop referring to abortion as murder.  It isn’t murder.  Murder is a crime, and abortion is legal, and so it cannot, technically, be murder.  When we use words like “murder” we get both sides angrier than they already are and nothing gets accomplished. No one gets rescued when we shout “murder.”

I would also ask that we stop referring to it as choice.  It isn’t a choice.  A choice is something you make at a drive through window.  A choice is a plane ticket to one destination over another.  When we use sterile words like “choice,” we dismiss in a very profane way the gravity, for every person involved, of the procedure.  No one is fooled when we whisper “choice.”

The word we should be using is one you might not consider when it comes to this topic, and that is “sacrifice.”  More importantly, we are talking about human sacrifice. 

Clearly the pre-born human is being sacrificed for one or more reasons.  It is being sacrificed due to economic hardship, unanticipated health concerns, social pressure, or a bleak combination of all three.  The human mother, however—a person rarely discussed in this conversation, weirdly enough—is also sacrificing something. She is sacrificing potential.  She is sacrificing, perhaps, many years’ worth of lost moments, when she must ponder the twin questions, “Did I do right?” and “What if?”

Every human involved—the father, the family, the medical personnel—sacrifice part of themselves in an abortion. That is why it’s so important that we get our terminology exactly right, because minimizing human sacrifice as much as possible—ending human sacrifice as quickly as we can—seems to be an idea that any rationale American could get behind.

After all, we’re not exactly the only culture that practices human sacrifice.  The history books are full of them.