Alpha Male: E

Elevators: I have this attraction/repulsion thing going on with elevators. As a child, I loved elevators, everything about them. I loved pressing the button to call for them and begged my mother to let me do it every time we approached one, even if she had to put down her parcels and hold me up so I could reach it. I loved riding on elevators and I was especially fascinated by the glass-enclosed sort that run outside a shaft and ascend in an office or hotel lobby so you can see and be seen while you ride. In high school, I did an entire history project on the Otis Elevator Company and learned more than most people probably care to know about the technology behind the elevator: how the cabling works, the sophisticated electronics in modern elevator traffic systems, how a relatively crude but effective safety mechanism keeps the car from plummeting to the bottom of the shaft (most of the time) in the unlikely event the cable from which it is suspended snaps.

But, oddly enough, armed with all of the knowledge, my most frequent recurring dream is of being in an elevator car when it begins to descend unchecked and at a high rate of speed. I always awake before the car reaches the squishy-splat-sub-basement, but the next time I approach a lift after one of those dreams, I seriously consider steering away and taking the stairs. It is not a full-fledged phobia; I never wuss out entirely. And -- thank St. Otis -- I have never been trapped in an elevator, felt as though I were in danger while riding in one, even so much as had a car in which I was a passenger arrive slightly out of plumb with the floor and had to step up or down while disembarking.

I accept elevators as a fact of modern life, venerate them as a remarkable invention that enabled majestic mountains of steel and glass to soar ever skyward. But I guess, on some subconcious level, I don't entirely trust them.