Short Story / Falling in Love in a Box
There are lots of normal places to fall in love; places that people anticipate and purposely plan for. For example: parks, candle-lit restaurants, movie theaters, dance clubs, but not limited to.Falling in love in one of these places could result in a lifetime of deeply satisfying and meaningful love, as well as being highly preferential to other places.
There are some places that are truly risky to fall in love. Roller coasters, in class, in traffic, in a bathroom, while grocery shopping, elevators…well, I would have said elevators.
All of these places can be fertile ground for romance, but it might be dangerous. It’s highly suggested that all kinds of love steer away from these areas, just to be safe. Like elevators – but I don’t want to be a hypocrite.
Elevators, if not places to fall in love, are such crazy little boxes. We spend most of our lives dealing with boxes. I often wonder how we manage to live on a round planet with all these damn boxes everywhere. Everywhere I look people are running in and out of box-shaped houses and into box-shaped stores. They open up their box-shaped door onto their box-shaped porch to get a box delivered by a man who drives a box-shaped truck that has plenty of more boxes in it. For breakfast we’ll open up a box of cereal. We eat all kinds of things out of boxes: crackers, cookies, stuffing mix, noodles, granola bars. We’ll occasionally eat things out of can, but they can give you botulism and should not be trusted. We walk on box-shaped sidewalks on city blocks to catch a box-shaped city bus. We spend our lives staring into boxes. TV’s, books, cell phone screens, computers, windows. Outside of our box-shaped windows, we can see signs in the shape of boxes – such as a Tow-Away Zone box, For Sale By Owner box, Speed limit box – the Stop Sign is an exception. We take box-shaped pictures of our friends, loved ones and memories, then put them in box-shaped frames. Then after all this time-spending in boxes, we fall asleep at night in a box-shaped bed with our head cushioned lovingly in a box-shaped pillow.
Some boxes pretend to not be boxes by having longer sides – but they’re rectangles and they’re not fooling anyone.
We spend so much time in boxes that all too often we forget they’re there. I so rarely walk into a room and admire how square the room is, how delighted I am by the smooth, flat walls on four sides of me. I hardly ever think about how some of the greatest works of art are all box-shaped. It seems that boxes are only given thought when they are not there.
A circular shaped room is always something admired. A triangle shaped door would probably be neat, but confuse a lot of people.
But as much as we’re accustomed to boxes, and are contained by their shape, the elevator box is most curious, yes, most highly curious of all. The idea of it is glorious: forcing lazy strangers into a small box with nothing to do except push buttons and stare at a door. The box contains them all – and certainly one should not interfere with the order that a box creates. Hands to yourself. Face towards the door. Push people’s buttons for them. Smile, and keep small talk at a minimum. Enter and exit the box as quickly and quietly as possible. After all, the elevator is simply to transport you somewhere – it’s not the highlight of your day.
So like I said before, elevators fall into the category of risky places to fall in love. And it should not be taken chances with unless you’re absolutely certain. This is how I always conducted my elevator business, until a certain elevator came into my life one Wednesday morning.
It was a typical box-shaped day, and I was on my way to school. My backpack was full of box-shaped books, and I was drinking juice out of a box, and feeling rather embarrassed about it since my mother used to pack me juice boxes in my lunch box when I was seven, and I was still drinking them. Now for some reason I was early for my class that day, and took a seat in the hall, 3rd floor, across from the elevator. I sat on a box-shaped cushion on top of a somewhat box-shaped chair, and was reading over my notes scribbled on a piece of box-shaped notepaper. Hung-over college students were waiting for the elevators, keeping their thoughts generally to themselves.
But then an elevator traveling up from the 2nd floor to the 4th or 5th floor, at either 8:52 a.m. or 8:53 a.m., came rushing into my life. I’m not sure why I bothered to look up at the elevator at this particular split second to watch the door open and let more strangers on and some strangers off, but the point is that I did. The shiny box-shaped doors split from the middle to reveal the most perfect man I had ever laid eyes on. My round eyes pierced through students, backpacks, trash cans, vending machines, and general kinds of hustle & bustle, to stare at him. And unless I was fooled, his round eyes looked back at me for just a split-second, before those damn shiny, box-shaped doors came together again, and took him away from me.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever been in love before, but I wanted to find out. I wanted to explain why he made me feel that way. Why out of all the people in the world, he stood out to me. There was nothing box-like about this fellow. In fact, he seemed entirely non-contained by boxes. He stood taller than most people and seemed to look down at them and be able to see all of their malarky from a birds-eye view. His hair was as dark as he was perfect, and the same could be said for his cheekbones, nose, ears, eyebrows, mouth, neck, and his over-all appearance. His hands were clearly polygons that could craft so many things together. So many interesting and fascinating things. He kept them folded across his chest to hide their mystery, but I knew better. But most of all his eyes. His sideless eyes – and the way they bored into mine. It was as if he spoke volumes to me in only one glance.
Like I said, I can’t say for sure whether or not I was in love.
I could tell all of this within the split-second that the box took him into my life and then removed him from it. Damn boxes. I had to see him again.
The next box-shaped day I sat in the same seat on the 3rd floor between 8:52 and 8:53, and waited for the elevator to come, and prayed that he wasn’t feeling athletic and taking the stairs today. Every time the elevator opened, my face shot up to look for him. Then finally between 8:58 and 8:59, I saw him again. He must have been running late today. I realized that I was therefore running late too, but it didn’t matter. This man was my prince of the elevator, lord of the boxes, and king of my heart – so it was okay to be a few minutes late to class. But only for a second I saw him, then he disappeared again.
My encounters with him in the morning felt like someone was flipping channels on a TV box, and the second that I saw him was as long as it took for them to change the channel again. Apparently whoever was flipping the channels didn’t like the show enough to stay at it very long, and kept on going until it found something they thought was more interesting.
I watched him every morning for a week before I mentioned him to anyone. My friends told me I should get out more. My mom asked me if I’d met someone and I said yes, then realized the actual answer was no. My cat said nothing, but I interpreted her silence as jealousy.
But being in love with him made me feel like I was accomplishing something; that I was going against the general order of the world. This wasn’t how I was to fall in love – there were other boxes available for love-falling. This was risky! I was throwing off destiny and/or fate. I wasn’t supposed to know, wasn’t supposed to see him. I sat in my box, and he sat in his – but I was changing things. I was throwing around the order of things. As far as I was concerned, I could show up early for class if I wanted to, I could sit by the elevators if I wanted to and I sure as hell could fall in love in any shape I wanted to!
The proper etiquette for entering an elevator is to wait directly outside the elevator about 4-5 feet back, as to not crowd the people potentially exiting. It is also proper to push either the up or down arrow, unless someone has all ready pushed your desired direction, in which case you are relieved of duty. Then you are to wait in the queue, silently, patiently, and without standing too close to anyone. When the elevator arrives at your floor, you allow current passengers to exit before entering yourself, ask the passenger closest to push your desired button, unless that button is all ready pushed, in which case you are relieved of duty yet again. Then wait silently for the box to start moving.
An example of improper elevator etiquette would be to not wait in the queue, wait an inappropriately long amount of time to enter, and run ardently toward the box right before take-off, then slam your leg in between the sliding, box-shaped doors to stop them from closing. This tactic is doable, but highly improper, and once again, risky.
But I saw him this morning and knew something new was going to happen…but I had to get up the nerve. I waited, and I waited…and waited until the boxes started moving, to shut him out of my life again. To change the channel on me, one more time. But with my leg, I stopped the boxes from ruling my life. I changed the course of history, as well as surprising quite a few hung-over college students.
Yet this box-shaped morning I didn’t care. This morning I decided I wanted to be a part of his life longer than the split second the boxes allowed for. This morning I was a part of his life from the time it took to get from the 3rd floor to the 5th floor. And I stood close to him – a socially inappropriate distance of closeness to him. He looked at me, my prince of the elevator.
“Good thing you made it onto the elevator today, huh?”
Come to think of it, there was nothing particularly box-shaped about that morning.
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I think you have a tendency to overwrite. There should be little to no reflecting on what the narrator says. She should be telling us a story and and sidetracking should be pertinent to the character, not explanatory. For example, the rant on boxes doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
The strongest parts of this story are your technical references like times and floors. This does a much better job of highlighting your box-themed then saying box-shaped.
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In your notes for the reviewer you state that you would like to enter this in a short story contest and that content is the most important thing to critisize, so I will give it my best shot.
When I first read this it seemed hard for me to get into the flow and rhythem of it. After I read it a second time I realized why. It doesn’t read like a short story, but rather an article or essay. It reminds me of something you would read by Lucy Kellaway’s in her columns featured in The Financial Times.
By no means am I taking away from your words as it is an excellent article – a human interest piece, but I think catagorizing it as a short story is a tad misleading.
I hope I was not too harsh, I am just trying to be honest and help.
Good luck with the contest and writing in general.
R.E. Knowlton III
I loved the way you presented this. Other than simply talking about some guy you met while taking the elevator, you told about how box-like our lives were and how you escaped the..box shaped-ness.
But, I don’t think the transition between paragraphs is that good. You go from talking about love, to talking about boxes, to talking about elevators, and then love again. Sure, you tend to reference the box shaped-ness from time to time when you’re not talking about it, but it doesn’t feel like its enough.
So, talk about boxes more where you don’t, and talk about love more where you talk about boxes.
I also liked your repetition when you wrote about the box shaped-ness, it added humor to the tone.
Great job.
Hey, we were all 5 years old once. Each of us had cardboard boxes and loved them to death. Personally, I think they’re pretty efficient. Enough standing room for people to mill around and fall in love, and enough wall height that we can all stand up straight.
I liked this piece, and at the same time something threw me off. It seems like a train of thought, revolving about longing for a man and everything being of the cubic persuasion.
These boxes are an interesting device in the story, but at the same time, when you talk too much about them, you seem to lose your rythm a little.
All the same, I liked it. The style made me smile. And the ending was sort of cool, too.
Good work
What a unique point of you! Your writing is so fresh and engaging. A real pleasure to read. I have no doubt that you’ll be winning contests as well as pulitzer prizes.
There are a couple of things that I think could be improved. In the beginning it isn’t clear if the falling in love is with a place or with someone else. For some reason for the first two paragraphs I was assuming that it was falling in love with a place itself. In the second sentence I would take out “but not limited to.” And towards the end “button is all ready pushed” should be “already.”
Alright, I hate to do this, but you want content-critique and I honestly don’t see this as a contest winner.
The repetetive box theme, while in-line with the title, is uninteresting.
Sentences like the one in the opening that starts with “For example” should be removed entirely and those items you mention should be blended into the opening if you insist on keeping them.
I am giving you an overall six, for content more than structure although you need to indent every paragraph and not double-space between them unless there is a POV switch or a significant shift in the time-line. The summary here: too much repetetive content. It feels like you could say this, concisely, in a paragraph or less. It needs characters with personalities and a purpose to be engaging. Good luck with revisions.
Ok, here goes: I like the boxes theme, but you need to make it connect to the love theme in much deeper capacity. Right now, the boxes are just a sideline and there’s little connection. So this guy happens into your life via a box—so what? Make it contrast with the smoothness of love or something like that. Make sense?
Grammatically, this is very clean and I think you’re years ahead of many your age who can’t spell never mind figure where to put commas.
Anything is possible, perhaps she felt harboured by life in the form of boxes only for them to be broken down around her like shattering glass by the emergence of love in her life.
Well paced story, good detail and play on words. The only thing I felt was wrong the rectangle piece didnt fit the profile.
Interesting piece. At first as I was reading it I felt it wasn’t a story at all but more of a narrative to how we all live in a world full of boxes, which I found intriguing and thoughtful btw. Never really thought about it, but I do recall the first time I entered a friend of mine’s house (shaped like an apple) and was in awe of all the roundness – different is good. But… back to your story. Enjoyed it. Cute, entertaining. Just didn’t like the ending for some reason (that last line of dialogue), and not that I don’t like abruptness, just thought maybe it was an odd thing or not the right thing for him to say. Or maybe this is the problem… lack of clarity as to who is speaking. Is it him, or is it her? Now I’m wondering.
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