Hate in an elevator. Beating me up when we're goin' down...

It was a bitterly cold day in Hamilton. The wind was gusting causing the -8 temperature to feel more like -23; I wasn't enjoying running my errands like I usually do. But the sun was shining and I had the pleasant duty to interview a lady from my church for our newsletter.

She had called me the night before, 'Claire!' she yelled into the phone, presumably fearful I couldn't hear her like she couldn't hear me. "Yes, hello Lillian."
'Claire!' she called again, 'you'll need to park at the church. There isn't any parking at my building.'

Since the church was immediately across the street from her apartment this wasn't a problem. I arrived early so I went over my questions with Rebekah, the secretary at the church and my roommate. Finally, just before the appointed time of 1pm I walked across the street and into her building. I rang her apartment, was greeted with an anxious 'the door's open!' with the word 'open' cut off by a buzzing sound as Lillian had eagerly pressed the button to unlock the foyer door too soon.

So far so good.

I pressed and elevator button to go to the 6th floor and surprisingly the door opened almost immediately. A tall elderly woman stepped out and finished up her conversation with another elderly woman, this one short, squat and quiet.
I asked, 'Up or down', and the lady who had stepped out said 'She's going up.' I smiled, said thanks and entered the elevator, quickly pressing 6 so the doors would close.

As I pressed 6 the small old lady became quite agitated, and indicated to me, in Italian or Portuguese, that the 'B' button was already illuminated because she was, in fact, going down.

In retrospect it's odd that the lady leaving the elevator was a) having a conversation with this lady as she left the elevator and b) seemed so certain she was going up.

Anyway, I said 'It's ok. Down.' I indicated to her it was ok if we went down first. She calmed down and we waited for the jerk of the elevator to give us a split-second weightless sensation, when instead the elevator jerked up and our weight was multiplied and shoved down on us.
This generated a flurry of hand gestures and, presumably, swear words from the small lady. She turned to me, clearly blaming me for a mixed up elevator.

Is it just me or don't ALL other elevators across the globe follow the order of the buttons pushed?

As we continued to rise and her voice and animated body language grew more frantic, she ran her chubby little fingers all over the buttons for each floor illuminating every floor between 1 and 6 and then some. Sadly for her the elevator followed orders this time. I hate to think that she had to endure floors 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 before she got to the basement again.

All this time I was apologizing and giving the international look for 'i-feel-badly-but-it's-not-my-fault' look by shrugging my shoulders as I said 'sorry' and pasting a concerned, upset frown on my face mixed with a pathetic smile to let her know I had good intentions.

This only intensified things and as she lifted the backside of her hand to the level of her face in the international 'I'm-going-to-slap-you' position the doors open to the 6th floor and I escaped unharmed but still enduring an onslaught of verbal abuse.

Lillian was waiting for me at the elevator doors and she giggled and hugged me as I stepped out onto her floor. This unabashed affection was mockingly imitated by my little friend in the elevator. ' HA HA HA HA HA!' she loudly mimicked.

And as the doors closed the sounds of mimicked laughter, multilingual swearing and cursing and body parts being flung about the elevator echoed in the hallway as the elevator made it's descent one floor at a time.