Love in an Elevator

I always have funny elevator conversations. For some reason, I always have weird conversations in elevators. Our office building is all swanky now, marble floors that my high heels echo off of and a fancy flat screen in each elevator updating you on the weather and the day's top headlines. But you can take the girl out of Hicksville, but you can't take the Hicksville out of the girl, right?

I'm usually walking with one of my co-workers, and at the moment we step into the elevator, we're talking about sex. Or analyzing a date she went on. Or complaining of love woes. Today, I was filling a co-worker in on some salacious celebrity drama about when Clare Danes cheated on sweetie crooner Ben Lee with Billy Crudup who was cheating on Mary Louise Parker while she was pregnant with his unborn son. It could have been worse, I suppose, if I was relaying the twists and turns of a real life sex scandal I was personally a part of. But either way, odd conversation for strangers to overhear.

In fact, my friend and I were talking about a recent dating disaster she had while we were waiting on an elevator, and a man in the lobby decided to wait for the next elevator to avoid hearing any more of our girlie gossip.

What would someone think of me if the only interaction we ever had was in an elevator? Take a few sentences out of any conversation, and you could sound like a total moron or insensitive brat. Which is how the MTV editors make The Real World so darn addictive and entertaining.

And then I think about all the funny Metro conversations I overhear, like the time I heard a man on the phone explaining in great detail how to order a sandwich at Subway. "First you choose the bread. You know, white, wheat, they have a cheese something-or-other. Then the meat selections. Chicken, ham..." Snore. How does that guy have a social life? Who would be the wanker and invite him along to bore everyone at happy hour? But then again, what do I know? Maybe he's telling his 80 year old grandmother that cousin Harry is opening a sandwich shop and not a mass transit system.

Just the other day, I had a phone conversation with my boss about the definition of rape while I was riding the Metro. Who knows what the other passengers thought of me. It's all just an entertaining part of thousands of lives overlapping in a small metropolitan area. Living in a big city is just like being on a reality show. Without the prize at the end.