I Don’t Know Nothin’ ‘Bout Elevators

Hi.  My name is Pearl, and I spend a lot of time in elevators. 
Hi, Pearl.
As you would suspect, this daily vertical winching has been slowly turning me into something of an expert in elevator presence.
So you can imagine how surprising it’s been for me, then, to find that there’s a definite lack of situational application for this information.
I reflect on all of this as I board the elevator, my bags held against me so as to not intrude on the space of others, my thoughtful punching of “Door Close” as the last person presses the button with their floor emblazoned on it.
I reflect on this as I realize that the early-morning smokers have also boarded.
As a person who has never enjoyed a pre-dawn smoke without it having come at the tail end of a long and drunken evening, never needed one before work, I can’t help but wonder if my fellow workers couldn’t have stood in the wind just a little longer, maybe popped an Altoid.
There should be something I can do with the smell, with the mix of filtered tobacco and cold air, something I can connect it to that will shine a light on something else.  Like the day I discovered the meaning of the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” or the realization that “he” didn’t call not because he was busy but because he just didn’t care.
I’m always looking for connections.
But sometimes there aren’t any.
Sometimes something stinks just because that’s what it does. 
Man.  There’s so much more to situational elevator presence than first presents itself.