The hungry elevator

ursula had a birthday yesterday, and suggested that we might leave her some words about:

* Your favorite towel,
* Your favorite robot with feelings, or
* An excessively opinionated elevator?

This reminded me of my memories of an excessively opinionated elevator...

West Kingdom 12th Night, in the early 2000's. It was nearly time for Coronation Court, and Berengaria looked at me and suggested that I go get my circlet, as many of us Royal Peers were going to swear fealty on our circlets, holding them in our hand before us. This sounded like a fun plan, so I hurried towards my room. The event was in a hotel with 13 floors, and my room was on floor five, so I took the elevator up to my floor, scurried into my room, grabbed my circlet from its box, stuck it on my head, without bothing with first tying a band around my head and pinning a veil to the band, and then using bobby pins to fasten my lightweight nickelsilver wire and hematite circlet to both the band and the veil (an arrangement which made possible my "stupid peer trick" of turning cartwheels without losing the veil or circlet).

Back to the hungry elevator I hurried, the doors opening as I arrived, so I stepped quickly in. At which point one of the many people in the lift (it might have been madbaker?) said "Going up?", and I replied "nope", and turned abruptly on my heel, and begin to leave the elevator as fast as I had entered. At which point my circlet slipped off my head in response to the sudden change in momentum, slid down my back, reached the floor just after I was completely out into the hallway again, and started rolling. I, feeling it sliding down my back, started to turn around, at just the right time to bump the circlet with my skirt hem, encouraging it to roll towards the elevator, whose opinion on the tastiness of circlets I still don't approve of, all these years later, and, just before the doors closed, my circlet reached that small gap between the elevator and the floor, and slipped within.

Before the doors closed tightly, I had just time to hear everyone on board gasp as they witnessed the fate of my circlet, but were powerless to prevent it, and to hear the elevator say "yum!

I did, of course, explain to the hotel staff what had happened, and they had a technician look under the elevator, and they even rode it up and down with the doors open, but they never saw a sign of the circlet, which the elevator thought the most tasty snack it had gotten in ages.