“The only thing I love more than love is love in enclosed spaces.”
-Creepy Tim, Set It Up
Four Rooms, 1995
Elevators are an integral part to love stories in Hollywood. Just watch 500 Days of Summer, New Year’s Eve, Serendipity, or Set It Up–all of them use elevators to drive their couples together. Elevators are essentially the key ingredient to the romance.
500 Days of Summer (2009)
So after watching all these movies, I was like I gotta try this, but alas, after about a gazillion elevator rides over the course of my nineteen years of life, nothing has happened. So then I wondered how many people have actually found love in elevators, so I went on good ol’ Google and found absolutely nothing to support this phenomenon of falling in love in elevators. No data. No statistics. No articles. Nothing. Do you know what actually happens in elevators in real life? Death.
Twenty-six Americans per year die in elevators! Twenty-six! That’s twelve-times the number of fish* that died in my possession last year. So elevators are serious business, man. They’re more dangerous to people than I am to fish.
In fact, in a forty-year working career, a person has a 6% chance of getting stuck in an elevator. And listen, I know 6% isn’t that much, but when comparing it to the 0% chance of finding love on an elevator, it means you’re 600 times** more likely to get trapped on an elevator than you are to find love on one.
Just last month, a woman was stuck in an elevator in Manhattan for three days, and a lot can happen in three days. Like death. Sure, the woman didn’t die in this instance, but it’s possible. Just look back at the twenty-six that do each year.
No one’s safe, yet every five days, the equivalent of the world’s population rides in Otis elevators. So many people are gambling their lives away–all for the 0% chance of falling in love in one, and don’t tell me that people are riding elevators for other reasons, like getting from floor to floor.
I mean, there are other options besides elevators. Escalators, for instance–though to be fair, escalators are twenty-times more dangerous than elevators. And then there are stairs, but per year, 12,000 people die from falling down stairs. So basically, it looks like remaining on ground-level is the move. Don’t go above or below it. Even if it’s to find love. Death is not worth it. Don’t listen to the movies and the T.V. shows that promise love on elevators because the only thing elevators promise is death. Sorry. But truth.
*For the record, my two fish did live in a loving home, and I did take care of them–very good care of them. I just have very bad luck. I am no intentional fish killer, so if people could stop calling me a fish killer, that would be superb.
**I did this math in my head, so there’s a high probability that I messed up this calculation, so if I’m wrong, just let it go please–for my sake, since math makes me cry.