The Curious Incident of the Two Crazy Elevator Passengers...

A strange conversation between two strangers in an elevator today:

So I'm standing in the elevator of a building on Greene St., having just delivered a letter to the seventh floor. There are two people in the elevator with me: a man and a woman. The elevator stops on the second floor, and a man enters, holding two umbrellas.

"Down?" He asks. "Down! Down!" He sounds a bit crazy, and, since the building is the home of the School of Ed, I wonder for a moment if he's a patient.

He gets in the elevator and looks at us. "I always bring umbrellas for my students," he informs us.

The woman who was already in the elevator with me asks, "Why don't I get one?"

He looks at her. "Well," he says, as if it's obvious, "you didn't ask."

"If I ask, can I get one?"

"Yes, of course. There's a beach umbrella left."

The elevator stops on the first floor and we walk out. The man keeps talking to the woman.

"You know, I've been here for fifty-three years!"

"Really?" asks the woman, a bit apprehensively.

"Yes. I've been teaching here for fifty-three years!..."

Maybe it doesn't look as funny on paper. But these two people obviously didn't know each other, and the umbrella conversation struck me as completely insane.

But maybe you had to be there...