Tuesday, February 03, 2004
INDIANA STUDENT LEADERSHIP FORUM -- First Report
It was fantastic -- in every way! It was fantastically cold! (-9 degrees below zero at the beginning of the Forum.) The scheduling of events, the speakers, the Facilitators and others who "made it happen" were fantastic. The most fantastic of all were the students that attended. There were 88. I didn't get to meet all 88. But I knew some before the Forum and I met a lot of them during the Forum. The ones I knew previously and the ones I met were fantastic. Our "Small Group", or "family", was fantastic. It didn't take long for us to become a group. And it didn't take long for me to come to respect, admire, enjoy and soon love the 7 in our family group. I miss them and and am praying daily for each of them. They all were the greatest!
I'll be posting about my experiences and observations in the next few posts. One experience was getting stuck in a very small elevator with 15 other attendees at the Crown Plaza Hotel. Now that was an experience! The doors were ready to close when a person shouted out, "Any more room?" Someone within the elevator said, "Sure, get on." When that person stepped in, the doors closed, the elevator grunted and groaned but would not move. We were only about 6 inches at the most on our way up. But the elevator was stuck, the doors were stuck. We weren't going anywhere! It was one of those elevators that had 3 sides glass. People were looking at us, pointing to us and taking our picture. But no one was doing anything to get us out.
Now I know why they put those telephone in elevators! (This one was red.) And I sure am glad they are there. After calling a couple of times and having a somewhat forceful dialogue with whomever was on the other side, they assured me "someone was on it!" My reply was, "There are 16 someones on this elevator! Get us off." At that, the lady on the other end of the line laughed. From that point they set about getting us out of the elevator. After some banging outside the door, it opened and we all exited.
It is a good thing, too, because with 16 people in a small space for about 15 minutes, the oxygen supply was fast dwindling. All in all everyone handled it reasonably well. One person (the one who stepped on last actually) became panicky because she thought she was going to run out of oxygen. One guy pulled out a huge switchblade knife and frightened some people. (He tried to pry open the elevator door with the knife, but to no avail.) Another guy started to tell about a time he was in an airplane crash on a runway. He didn't get to finish his story because the doors came open as he began his story. No one wanted to stay around to hear the end of his story.
We were none the worse for the wear and we made a memory and had an experience to tell about. I have something to Blog about and several people we don't know have pictures of us stuck in an elevator!
*Sigh* You never know.
More about the actual Forum later. But I'm ready to be a facilitator next year! It was wonderful.
Jim
jimdewing@yahoo.com
posted by jim 5:28 PM 0 comments
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