The Time I Thought I'd Die

A Very Scary Moment

    My seventh-grade summer was unwillingly spent traveling Turkey for 6 weeks. It was a summer camp with the religion classes I was taking at the time. It was a trip where we would travel throughout the country but the catch was that we had to do all things Islamic. They were trying to get us to expand on our culture and religion while having fun traveling too. Anyway, I'm not 100% sure which city we were in, but we were staying at a dormitory with eight floors. We had the entire seventh floor to ourselves. One night, after the entire camp was done playing soccer, we walked back to the dormitory. Now, of course, nobody is going to want to walk up seven floors after just having played soccer. There was about 30-40 of us and we crammed as many people as we could into the elevator. We had about 15 people inside (the capacity was 5 but the elevator was huge).

Other's were waiting for the next elevator or just took the stairs. So, we're now packed like sardines in this elevator slowly creeping up to the seventh floor. I can see the digital floor counter reach the seventh floor and the elevator for about 6-8 seconds was just trying to get level with the floor, due to the overweight elevator it couldn't stop on the floor. The elevator would go just over our floor, then just under, it did this twice. We were all worried but we weren't expecting what happened next. We start descending slowly at first but as we progress further back down, the elevator continuously picks up speed. Once we just about reached the first floor the elevator gained a lot of speed at once. We crashed down into the basement floor and had to wait 15 minutes for a maintenance man to open the door. To get out of the elevator we had to step up about a foot and a half. 

    From beginning to end of this elevator ride, it was about 30 seconds. I just remember trying to think of my most positive memories of my life. Some of the kids were in tears, most were just screaming. One of the chaperones told us to keep our knees bent. So I just bent my knees a little and hoped for the best. I thought we were actually going to die. My heart was beating faster than ever. Nobody died but half the people sustained knee injuries. I was in shock that I was completely fine. 

    I can relate this to Hemingway's "Poem" because in that poem he conveys that death can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime.