twenty-two down.

WHOOO-UP WHOOO-UP! WHOOO-UP WHOOO-UP! May I have your attention please. This is a fire drill. Please make your way to the nearest exit. Do not use the elevators. WHOOO-UP WHOOO-UP! WHOOO-UP WHOOO-UP! Puedo tener su atención por favor. Esto es un simulacro de incendio. Haga por favor su manera a la salida más cercana. No utilice los elevadores.

We all received emails a week ago that there was going to be a fire drill soon. One of our program managers was designated Fire Warden for our floor, and we made fun of him for that, because we used up the bad coffee jokes years ago. We were informed that during this drill, we would be expected to completely exit the building, rather than just stop at the 18th floor like we had last time. I secretly hoped that the fire drill would come at some point after my last day.

But no. And so when I started hearing that WHOOO-UP WHOOO-UP!, I grabbed my jacket and followed Lee, the guy who has the office next to mine, because I hadn't finished reading the email about the fire drill and so I didn't really know what I was supposed to do. Lee seems like the kind of guy who reads his emails. I used to read mine. Then I gave notice.

The nearest exit turned out to be about twenty feet west (which I did not know) and twenty-two floors down (which I did know). I'm sure you don't hold any illusions about going down seemingly endless flights of stairs as pleasant. Just in case, I'll describe for you what it's like.

After five floors, you get a little bored of the scenery, unless you happen to get stuck behind someone with some head scars that look like maps of Latin American countries. After ten floors, you start to feel like you might be trapped in an Escher picture or maybe you're one of the lower classes in Brave New World. You may feel like a nameless drone, depending on how often that thought occurs to you during your workday anyway. After fifteen floors, you are sure that you are ready to cause personal harm to the pair of secretaries (noted by their business dress matched with tennis shoes and who you have dubbed Cathy and Kathy) who have been listing off each floor the whole way, making the same joke about wishing the sign said "Lobby" every single time. And while yes, fine, your calves are starting to feel a little weird, you do realize that gravity is doing most of the work here and to complain about it incessantly would be obnoxious. After twenty floors, you feel a little wobbly in either your ankles or your knees, depending on which sport you played in high school. The secretaries have slowed the pace considerably, the equivalent of aged Florida tourists on a single-lane curvy mountain road, a line of locals behind them. You imagine a real emergency, wherein those same secretaries would suddenly become Olympic athletes and the stairwell would be much too smoky for them to make lame jokes. Finally, the wildest dreams of Kathy-K and Cathy-C come true: the sign actually does say "Lobby." And you can exit the building towards your designated meeting spot where the Fire Warden will count you safe, which makes him sound like more of a Fire Umpire. Then you will stand there for less than two minutes before turning around and heading back into the building.

You will take the elevator.