Potrzebie
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Real-Life Horror #5: High-rise Terrors
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When I worked at TV Guide in the early 1960s, I was on the 28th floor of the Sperry-Rand Building (at 1290 Sixth Avenue). The CBS building had just been constructed across the street. It was nicknamed Black Rock because the building was clad in unpolished Canadian black granite. One day I looked out the window and saw a small crack in the granite on the 27th floor. Some days later, I noticed it had widened. Just when I was beginning to wonder if I should report my observations, a scaffold was lowered, and three guys in suits and ties nervously climbed out a window, making a scary transfer to the scaffold. Later, a huge metal bolt was put in the crack, maybe to keep granite from falling to the street. Exactly how the final repair was accomplished I never knew. Years later, I learned that certain sidewalks in Manhattan have temporary coverings not because construction is underway but because pieces of buildings are falling off.
There were only three offices on the 28th floor: TV Guide, Martin Ransohoff Productions and Jac Holzman's Elektra Records, with its subsidiaries Nonesuch Records and Nonesuch Films. One day I asked Holzman what films Nonesuch Films had made, and he said, "Nonesuch." When some kind of construction work was going on inside Elektra, I heard an odd sound, turned and saw a drill coming through the wall toward my head. I backed away.
Around the corner from the elevators was a door that obviously did not lead to Ransohoff, Elektra or TV Guide. I became curious, and one day I turned the doorknob, realized it was unlocked, opened the door and gasped in amazement.
The door opened into a gigantic airshaft about 30 feet across. I stepped out onto a tiny platform with a waist-high railing. With one hand I clutched the railing. I was standing inside the airshaft, and I took care not to let the door close behind me, keeping my other hand on the doorknob. What if it closed... and then locked? In retrospect, the situation looked like it could have been a scene from Die Hard. Wind swirled as I looked up toward the top of the building and down into darkness. There was nothing to see but other small platforms off in the distance. I stepped back inside and closed the door.
Every so often I recalled the moment of standing on that tiny ledge inside the immense interior. It had been like stepping into an alternate world from the brightly lit hallway. No one else ever seemed interested in the door, even when I described what I had seen. When the coffee cart rolled from the elevator, we stood in line in the hallway, and I would glance at the door, knowing the world beyond. I was haunted by that memory, and a month later, I opened the door again. This time was different. The wind was much stronger. Holding the door, I stepped out with only one foot. The intensity of the wind was such that I wondered if I could be suddenly sucked into the airshaft. With that fearful thought, I quickly stepped back into the hallway and never opened the door again.
When I worked at TV Guide in the early 1960s, I was on the 28th floor of the Sperry-Rand Building (at 1290 Sixth Avenue). The CBS building had just been constructed across the street. It was nicknamed Black Rock because the building was clad in unpolished Canadian black granite. One day I looked out the window and saw a small crack in the granite on the 27th floor. Some days later, I noticed it had widened. Just when I was beginning to wonder if I should report my observations, a scaffold was lowered, and three guys in suits and ties nervously climbed out a window, making a scary transfer to the scaffold. Later, a huge metal bolt was put in the crack, maybe to keep granite from falling to the street. Exactly how the final repair was accomplished I never knew. Years later, I learned that certain sidewalks in Manhattan have temporary coverings not because construction is underway but because pieces of buildings are falling off.There were only three offices on the 28th floor: TV Guide, Martin Ransohoff Productions and Jac Holzman's Elektra Records, with its subsidiaries Nonesuch Records and Nonesuch Films. One day I asked Holzman what films Nonesuch Films had made, and he said, "Nonesuch." When some kind of construction work was going on inside Elektra, I heard an odd sound, turned and saw a drill coming through the wall toward my head. I backed away.
Around the corner from the elevators was a door that obviously did not lead to Ransohoff, Elektra or TV Guide. I became curious, and one day I turned the doorknob, realized it was unlocked, opened the door and gasped in amazement.
The door opened into a gigantic airshaft about 30 feet across. I stepped out onto a tiny platform with a waist-high railing. With one hand I clutched the railing. I was standing inside the airshaft, and I took care not to let the door close behind me, keeping my other hand on the doorknob. What if it closed... and then locked? In retrospect, the situation looked like it could have been a scene from Die Hard. Wind swirled as I looked up toward the top of the building and down into darkness. There was nothing to see but other small platforms off in the distance. I stepped back inside and closed the door.
Every so often I recalled the moment of standing on that tiny ledge inside the immense interior. It had been like stepping into an alternate world from the brightly lit hallway. No one else ever seemed interested in the door, even when I described what I had seen. When the coffee cart rolled from the elevator, we stood in line in the hallway, and I would glance at the door, knowing the world beyond. I was haunted by that memory, and a month later, I opened the door again. This time was different. The wind was much stronger. Holding the door, I stepped out with only one foot. The intensity of the wind was such that I wondered if I could be suddenly sucked into the airshaft. With that fearful thought, I quickly stepped back into the hallway and never opened the door again.
Labels: die hard, holzman, real-life horror
¶ 3:38 PM 3 comments
Monday, November 01, 2010
Real-life Horror #4: Wake-up Call
I missed my October deadline for the annual "Real-Life Horror", but here we go. Click the label at bottom to see others in the series.
About six years ago, still half asleep, I decided a mix of Shredded Wheat and Raisin Bran would make a nice breakfast. I filled the bowl in semi-darkness.
I took the first spoonful and was startled by a slight pain in my mouth on my gums. I thought, "That's funny. Could one of the shreds of the wheat be that sharp?" I decided not to swallow. Instead, I spit it all out into a paper towel and lying in the milk and cereal was a live spider waving his legs. He was the size of a small raisin.
When I was taking the first bite, the spider bit first. I waited, but there was no later reaction indicating poison. It reminded me that something similar had happened to me before. When I was a child, something flew in my mouth, stung me and flew away.
Now I always look closely when I pour something from a box or bottle.
I missed my October deadline for the annual "Real-Life Horror", but here we go. Click the label at bottom to see others in the series.
About six years ago, still half asleep, I decided a mix of Shredded Wheat and Raisin Bran would make a nice breakfast. I filled the bowl in semi-darkness.
I took the first spoonful and was startled by a slight pain in my mouth on my gums. I thought, "That's funny. Could one of the shreds of the wheat be that sharp?" I decided not to swallow. Instead, I spit it all out into a paper towel and lying in the milk and cereal was a live spider waving his legs. He was the size of a small raisin.
When I was taking the first bite, the spider bit first. I waited, but there was no later reaction indicating poison. It reminded me that something similar had happened to me before. When I was a child, something flew in my mouth, stung me and flew away.
Now I always look closely when I pour something from a box or bottle.
Labels: real-life horror, spider
¶ 2:08 PM 0 comments
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Real-life Horror #3: Anti-Maim
Halloween approaches, which means it's time once again for another installment in our Real-life Horror series.
Picture a one-story wooden high school building in East Texas during the early 1950s. While reading science fiction magazines in the study hall, I would occasionally glance at the wart on my right thumb. I had tried various ointments and rumored remedies, but nothing worked. The wart remained.
The chemistry class was an oddity, taught by a young man with a lot of enthusiasm but not much knowledge of chemistry. He would make an impressive entrance with a big smile and say something like, "Hey! This is quite an experiment we will be doing today. Doc Hawkins and I did it last night, and it actually works!"
The chemistry classroom was way at the back of the building, and in the rear of that classroom was a small storeroom, never locked, where the chemicals and other equipment were kept. When I saw the giant-sized jug of sulphuric acid, I immediately knew it could be the solution to my wart problem. But I was baffled by the delivery system. How could I get the acid from jug to wart without becoming a member of the Nub Club? The jug was too large and heavy to tilt without splashing sulphuric acid around.
One day, when no one was in that area of the building, I went into the storeroom and stared at the jug until the answer came to me. I walked outside through the back door of the building and found a long thin wooden stick. Back in the storeroom, I unscrewed the cap as sulphuric fumes wafted free. I inserted the stick and pulled it out. Did I simply put the stick on my thumb? No. That seemed unwise, as I could imagine the acid continuing through the wart and dissolving the bone in my thumb.
By 1954, I had read many EC Comics, so I considered myself fairly expert re body mutilation. Instead of holding the stick over my thumb, I held my thumb over the stick. I very lightly touched the acid to the wart for a fraction of a second and quickly pulled my thumb away. I capped the jug and threw the stick outside. The self-operation was 100% successful. The wart shriveled into nothingness and vanished, with only a tiny trace of a scar.
The phrase "Nub Club" is sometimes heard in Vernon, Florida, a town of the Walking Maimed. According to Ken Dornstein in his book Accidentally, on Purpose: The Making of a Personal Injury Underworld in America (1996), almost 50 men in Vernon and nearby areas collected insurance for faked accidents and self-mutilation. Insurance investigator John J. Healy offered a horrific description of desperation in Vernon that reads like a Graham Ingels EC story: "To sit in your car on a sweltering summer evening on the main street of Nub City, watching anywhere from eight to a dozen cripples walking along the street, gives the place a ghoulish, eerie atmosphere."
Another portrait of life in Vernon came in 1984, as described in 2007 by Thomas Lake in "Dismembered Again" (St. Petersburg Times, September 2, 2007):
Errol Morris, who made the classic documentary Vernon, Florida (1981), commented on the town's insurance-obsessed inhabitants, "They literally became a fraction of themselves to become whole financially." Morris originally arrived in Vernon to film the story of mutilations and loss limbs, but according to the biography at his website, the film "had to be retooled when his subjects threatened to murder him."
Halloween approaches, which means it's time once again for another installment in our Real-life Horror series.Picture a one-story wooden high school building in East Texas during the early 1950s. While reading science fiction magazines in the study hall, I would occasionally glance at the wart on my right thumb. I had tried various ointments and rumored remedies, but nothing worked. The wart remained.
The chemistry class was an oddity, taught by a young man with a lot of enthusiasm but not much knowledge of chemistry. He would make an impressive entrance with a big smile and say something like, "Hey! This is quite an experiment we will be doing today. Doc Hawkins and I did it last night, and it actually works!"
The chemistry classroom was way at the back of the building, and in the rear of that classroom was a small storeroom, never locked, where the chemicals and other equipment were kept. When I saw the giant-sized jug of sulphuric acid, I immediately knew it could be the solution to my wart problem. But I was baffled by the delivery system. How could I get the acid from jug to wart without becoming a member of the Nub Club? The jug was too large and heavy to tilt without splashing sulphuric acid around.
One day, when no one was in that area of the building, I went into the storeroom and stared at the jug until the answer came to me. I walked outside through the back door of the building and found a long thin wooden stick. Back in the storeroom, I unscrewed the cap as sulphuric fumes wafted free. I inserted the stick and pulled it out. Did I simply put the stick on my thumb? No. That seemed unwise, as I could imagine the acid continuing through the wart and dissolving the bone in my thumb.
By 1954, I had read many EC Comics, so I considered myself fairly expert re body mutilation. Instead of holding the stick over my thumb, I held my thumb over the stick. I very lightly touched the acid to the wart for a fraction of a second and quickly pulled my thumb away. I capped the jug and threw the stick outside. The self-operation was 100% successful. The wart shriveled into nothingness and vanished, with only a tiny trace of a scar.
The phrase "Nub Club" is sometimes heard in Vernon, Florida, a town of the Walking Maimed. According to Ken Dornstein in his book Accidentally, on Purpose: The Making of a Personal Injury Underworld in America (1996), almost 50 men in Vernon and nearby areas collected insurance for faked accidents and self-mutilation. Insurance investigator John J. Healy offered a horrific description of desperation in Vernon that reads like a Graham Ingels EC story: "To sit in your car on a sweltering summer evening on the main street of Nub City, watching anywhere from eight to a dozen cripples walking along the street, gives the place a ghoulish, eerie atmosphere."
Another portrait of life in Vernon came in 1984, as described in 2007 by Thomas Lake in "Dismembered Again" (St. Petersburg Times, September 2, 2007):
On June 20, 1984, according to the Associated Press, the Vernon City Council was discussing the firing of the town's only police officer. As a former schoolteacher spoke in protest, council president Narvel Armstrong gaveled him down and adjourned the meeting.
The next part would be hard to believe if weren't on tape. A cameraman for WMBB in Panama City happened to be there, and his footage shows Armstrong, then 46, a slight woman with a white blouse and a helmet of brown hair, walk past another woman and backhand her in the head. You see a barefoot young man join the fight. He pins the teacher against a wall and stands over him. The teacher raises his hands to shield his head, but it does not work. The barefoot man's right fist is tireless. He clocks the teacher six times before the camera turns away. Later you see the teacher's face covered in blood.
You see an older man fighting too. He is thick at the middle, balding, wearing khakis. He punches a woman while the barefoot man holds her arm. He assists in the thrashing of the teacher. You see his right hand whooshing through the air, connecting with flesh, and you look for his left hand but it is gone. In its place is a metal hook.
Errol Morris, who made the classic documentary Vernon, Florida (1981), commented on the town's insurance-obsessed inhabitants, "They literally became a fraction of themselves to become whole financially." Morris originally arrived in Vernon to film the story of mutilations and loss limbs, but according to the biography at his website, the film "had to be retooled when his subjects threatened to murder him."
Labels: horrorda, memoir, real-life horror, wart
¶ 11:23 AM 5 comments
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Real-life horror tale #2
At this time last year I told the real-life horror story of how I became trapped in an unusual freak accident when one of my college instructors thought it would be fun to start pushing me out a second-story window.
Now Halloween is almost here, so time for another real-life horror story…
When I lived in Cambridge during the 1970s, I learned that comic art dealer Jerry Weist and his girlfriend Cathy were not happy with their living situation near Harvard Square. It was a small room in an apartment they had to share with a group of rowdy students. I told them that there might be a place in the building where I was living just off Massachusetts Avenue.
I explained that my landlady was on the first floor, I was on the second floor, and that perhaps the landlady could clear out her storeroom on the third floor. If so, then they could rent that space from her and pay me monthly for the use of my kitchen and bathroom. Jerry and Cathy came over, met the landlady, and surprisingly, everyone involved came to an immediate agreement with no problems.
I then realized the kitchen oven would have to be repaired. I never used it because the oven flame would somehow extinguish itself after a few minutes, yet gas would continue to spew forth. I called a repair service, and someone came over to fix it. When he left, I gave the repair bill to the landlady. A few days later, Jerry and Cathy moved in, and the living arrangement seemed to work to everyone’s mutual satisfaction.
One day, Cathy experienced a close call; she had been drinking beer and eating potato chips when she discovered a portion of a razor-sharp cutting blade in the bag of potato chips. I told her about a lawyer I knew, and even though she had never put the metal in her mouth, the lawyer succeeded in getting the Borden company to send a check.
Cathy was not happy with her job and missed her friends in the Midwest. She announced she was leaving, and a week later, she moved back to Kansas. Jerry continued to live in the upstairs room and suggested that with Cathy gone, he should now pay me less rent for the kitchen and bathroom. I was surprised by this, said no to the idea, and he continued to pay the same amount.
The headphones for my stereo had an extremely long wire. I came back to the apartment one afternoon and noticed that Jerry was obviously listening to my stereo, since the wire ran all the way into the hallway and up the staircase to the third floor. Instead of complaining about this, I went to lie down because I suddenly felt quite sleepy.
The next thing I knew, I was being awakened by Jerry, who was shaking me and saying loudly, “Gas… gas!” Obviously, the repairman had done nothing to fix the oven; it was still a lethal instrument. Jerry had been cooking something and then had gone upstairs, unaware that the entire second floor was filling with gas from the defective oven. By the time he came down the stairs to check on his food, I had already passed out, and my bedroom had become a death chamber.
While he went around opening windows, I managed to stagger down the stairs and out the front door, nearly collapsing on the sidewalk where I stood inhaling fresh air until my head cleared. Whenever I recall this incident, I ponder the alternative endings. One, of course, being the possibility that Jerry never saw me in the bedroom and thus I was never awakened. The other is like the final scene of Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun when Maria (Hanna Schygulla) returns home, lights a match and her entire house explodes.
What are the odds of getting gassed twice? Some years later, I was in New York working at DC Comics and living in Queens. I had been told that the previous tenant had a job with the Brooklyn gas company. Perhaps that explained why the apartment had no stove when I moved in; he had simply disconnected the gas and taken the stove when he left. One day the elderly landlord's son came by to notify me of a rent increase. I countered with the suggestion that he supply a stove. He agreed, and soon a brand new stove was installed. It worked perfectly. Then I noticed an oddity: no matter how much gas I used, no bills arrived. It was somewhat reminiscent of that 1941 William Saroyan play, The Beautiful People, about an entire family living on monthly pension checks mistakenly addressed to a dead man.
Months passed with no gas bills. One day, after noticing a gas truck parked in front, I opened my door and heard the gas man talking to the family on the floor above as he turned on their gas. He finished the job, walked past my door on the way down and in less than a minute I became aware that gas was pouring into my room, obviously triggered by whatever pipes he had opened for the floor above. Was it so much gas that it could be ignited by the pilot light on the stove? I had to get it fixed before he drove away. I ran down the stairs, out the front door, across the sidewalk, slammed into the side of his truck and explained in a rush what was happening. He stared at me in disbelief and then wordlessly studied his paperwork as I kept babbling. Then he slowly got out of the truck and went upstairs. When he made some adjustments, the flow of gas ceased. After calling into his headquarters, he turned and scowled at me, a look suggesting that I was somehow responsible, and said, "Okay, buddy, that's it. This won't be retroactive, but from now on, you're going to be billed. Got that, pal?"
At this time last year I told the real-life horror story of how I became trapped in an unusual freak accident when one of my college instructors thought it would be fun to start pushing me out a second-story window.
Now Halloween is almost here, so time for another real-life horror story…
When I lived in Cambridge during the 1970s, I learned that comic art dealer Jerry Weist and his girlfriend Cathy were not happy with their living situation near Harvard Square. It was a small room in an apartment they had to share with a group of rowdy students. I told them that there might be a place in the building where I was living just off Massachusetts Avenue.
I explained that my landlady was on the first floor, I was on the second floor, and that perhaps the landlady could clear out her storeroom on the third floor. If so, then they could rent that space from her and pay me monthly for the use of my kitchen and bathroom. Jerry and Cathy came over, met the landlady, and surprisingly, everyone involved came to an immediate agreement with no problems.
I then realized the kitchen oven would have to be repaired. I never used it because the oven flame would somehow extinguish itself after a few minutes, yet gas would continue to spew forth. I called a repair service, and someone came over to fix it. When he left, I gave the repair bill to the landlady. A few days later, Jerry and Cathy moved in, and the living arrangement seemed to work to everyone’s mutual satisfaction.
One day, Cathy experienced a close call; she had been drinking beer and eating potato chips when she discovered a portion of a razor-sharp cutting blade in the bag of potato chips. I told her about a lawyer I knew, and even though she had never put the metal in her mouth, the lawyer succeeded in getting the Borden company to send a check.
Cathy was not happy with her job and missed her friends in the Midwest. She announced she was leaving, and a week later, she moved back to Kansas. Jerry continued to live in the upstairs room and suggested that with Cathy gone, he should now pay me less rent for the kitchen and bathroom. I was surprised by this, said no to the idea, and he continued to pay the same amount.
The headphones for my stereo had an extremely long wire. I came back to the apartment one afternoon and noticed that Jerry was obviously listening to my stereo, since the wire ran all the way into the hallway and up the staircase to the third floor. Instead of complaining about this, I went to lie down because I suddenly felt quite sleepy.
The next thing I knew, I was being awakened by Jerry, who was shaking me and saying loudly, “Gas… gas!” Obviously, the repairman had done nothing to fix the oven; it was still a lethal instrument. Jerry had been cooking something and then had gone upstairs, unaware that the entire second floor was filling with gas from the defective oven. By the time he came down the stairs to check on his food, I had already passed out, and my bedroom had become a death chamber.
While he went around opening windows, I managed to stagger down the stairs and out the front door, nearly collapsing on the sidewalk where I stood inhaling fresh air until my head cleared. Whenever I recall this incident, I ponder the alternative endings. One, of course, being the possibility that Jerry never saw me in the bedroom and thus I was never awakened. The other is like the final scene of Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun when Maria (Hanna Schygulla) returns home, lights a match and her entire house explodes.
What are the odds of getting gassed twice? Some years later, I was in New York working at DC Comics and living in Queens. I had been told that the previous tenant had a job with the Brooklyn gas company. Perhaps that explained why the apartment had no stove when I moved in; he had simply disconnected the gas and taken the stove when he left. One day the elderly landlord's son came by to notify me of a rent increase. I countered with the suggestion that he supply a stove. He agreed, and soon a brand new stove was installed. It worked perfectly. Then I noticed an oddity: no matter how much gas I used, no bills arrived. It was somewhat reminiscent of that 1941 William Saroyan play, The Beautiful People, about an entire family living on monthly pension checks mistakenly addressed to a dead man.
Months passed with no gas bills. One day, after noticing a gas truck parked in front, I opened my door and heard the gas man talking to the family on the floor above as he turned on their gas. He finished the job, walked past my door on the way down and in less than a minute I became aware that gas was pouring into my room, obviously triggered by whatever pipes he had opened for the floor above. Was it so much gas that it could be ignited by the pilot light on the stove? I had to get it fixed before he drove away. I ran down the stairs, out the front door, across the sidewalk, slammed into the side of his truck and explained in a rush what was happening. He stared at me in disbelief and then wordlessly studied his paperwork as I kept babbling. Then he slowly got out of the truck and went upstairs. When he made some adjustments, the flow of gas ceased. After calling into his headquarters, he turned and scowled at me, a look suggesting that I was somehow responsible, and said, "Okay, buddy, that's it. This won't be retroactive, but from now on, you're going to be billed. Got that, pal?"
Labels: brooklyn, cambridge, gas, Halloween, horrorda, queens, real-life horror
¶ 12:36 PM 4 comments
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
University of Horrorda
©2007 Tribune Media
I think we need a real-life horror story here for Halloween.
My memory of the incident below came back while I was reading about the death of Carol Gotbaum in the Phoenix airport. Her handcuffs were secured by a short chain attached to the back of the bench where she was sitting. She probably died when she twisted around, found the chain pressing against her neck and then was unable to move from that position.
My own situation was more akin to Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 short story, "A Predicament," in which the narrator climbs the interior of a Gothic cathedral. Here is the Black Mass audio adaptation. After the narrator sticks her head through a hole in the face of the steeple's gigantic clock to admire the city, she soon discovers that the clock's immense steel minute-hand has moved against her neck, pinning her with no escape:
My memory of the incident below came back while I was reading about the death of Carol Gotbaum in the Phoenix airport. Her handcuffs were secured by a short chain attached to the back of the bench where she was sitting. She probably died when she twisted around, found the chain pressing against her neck and then was unable to move from that position.
My own situation was more akin to Edgar Allan Poe's 1838 short story, "A Predicament," in which the narrator climbs the interior of a Gothic cathedral. Here is the Black Mass audio adaptation. After the narrator sticks her head through a hole in the face of the steeple's gigantic clock to admire the city, she soon discovers that the clock's immense steel minute-hand has moved against her neck, pinning her with no escape:
"Turning my head gently to one side, I perceived, to my extreme horror, that the huge, glittering, scimitar-like minute-hand of the clock had, in the course of its hourly revolution, descended upon my neck. There was, I knew, not a second to be lost. I pulled back at once–but it was too late. There was no chance of forcing my head through the mouth of that terrible trap in which it was so fairly caught, and which grew narrower and narrower with a rapidity too horrible to be conceived. The agony of that moment is not to be imagined."
When I was in college, I had some classes in a towering 19th-century Gothic building constructed in 1889. One day, I found myself alone in a room in that building with Lyn Murray, an instructor I disliked. It may be that he sensed my reaction to him. While we were talking, I sat on a radiator with my back to a window about six inches behind me. The radiator had a metal radiator cover on top. Murray suddenly decided it would be amusing to act like he was pushing me out the window. I guess the fact that we were one flight up made it more amusing to him. He moved toward me with a big grin on his face and grabbed both of my shoulders.
When he pushed me back towards the window, I reached to hold on as a natural reflex. I put both hands between my legs and grabbed the front edge of the radiator cover. It was then I realized that the metal cover was not attached but was just loosely positioned on top. As he pushed, it tilted backwards. When he released my shoulders, the heavy object swung back down.
As it fell into place, my left hand was pinned, and I felt excruciating pain as my entire body weight and the weight of the metal cover were both pressing a 1/4th-inch wide front metal fringe against the fingers of my left hand. I knew instantly that I could not roll forward, as it might break my fingers (and I would fall face forward toward the floor). I could not go backward because I would then be pulling in the wrong direction from where my hand was caught (and possibly could actually go out the window). I could not bring my leg under my arm. I also felt like my fingers might break with any extra movement. I calculated all options in a split second and knew they would all fail. I was trapped.
I could see only one solution. He was standing in front of me, looking in horror at the expression on my face, as I gasped, "Lift me up." Without hesitating, he grabbed me under the armpits and pulled me straight up. As he did so, I managed to pull the radiator cover up an inch, and my hand slipped free. The cover crashed back into place. My fingers were intact, and I stood there rubbing them until the pain went away. Speechless, he stared aghast at my reddened fingers, probably thinking that if I went to the college clinic, his teaching career would be over.
It had all happened within 15 seconds. There were no witnesses, and it may be that I never discussed the incident with anyone. If such a situation happened at a college today, a student would probably call a lawyer and sue the school for $20 million.
When I was in college, I had some classes in a towering 19th-century Gothic building constructed in 1889. One day, I found myself alone in a room in that building with Lyn Murray, an instructor I disliked. It may be that he sensed my reaction to him. While we were talking, I sat on a radiator with my back to a window about six inches behind me. The radiator had a metal radiator cover on top. Murray suddenly decided it would be amusing to act like he was pushing me out the window. I guess the fact that we were one flight up made it more amusing to him. He moved toward me with a big grin on his face and grabbed both of my shoulders.
When he pushed me back towards the window, I reached to hold on as a natural reflex. I put both hands between my legs and grabbed the front edge of the radiator cover. It was then I realized that the metal cover was not attached but was just loosely positioned on top. As he pushed, it tilted backwards. When he released my shoulders, the heavy object swung back down.
As it fell into place, my left hand was pinned, and I felt excruciating pain as my entire body weight and the weight of the metal cover were both pressing a 1/4th-inch wide front metal fringe against the fingers of my left hand. I knew instantly that I could not roll forward, as it might break my fingers (and I would fall face forward toward the floor). I could not go backward because I would then be pulling in the wrong direction from where my hand was caught (and possibly could actually go out the window). I could not bring my leg under my arm. I also felt like my fingers might break with any extra movement. I calculated all options in a split second and knew they would all fail. I was trapped.
I could see only one solution. He was standing in front of me, looking in horror at the expression on my face, as I gasped, "Lift me up." Without hesitating, he grabbed me under the armpits and pulled me straight up. As he did so, I managed to pull the radiator cover up an inch, and my hand slipped free. The cover crashed back into place. My fingers were intact, and I stood there rubbing them until the pain went away. Speechless, he stared aghast at my reddened fingers, probably thinking that if I went to the college clinic, his teaching career would be over.
It had all happened within 15 seconds. There were no witnesses, and it may be that I never discussed the incident with anyone. If such a situation happened at a college today, a student would probably call a lawyer and sue the school for $20 million.
Labels: gothic, horrorda, memoir, painting, poe, real-life horror, university
¶ 6:35 AM 2 comments
