We Made the News :(

Well, not us per se; our building (and specifically, our floor!).

A newly-married young (32) woman who lived one floor below us (on the opposite side of the hall) apparently locked herself out of her new unit this past Monday. For unknown reasons, instead of going to the building manager to get him to let her in, she came to our (15th*) floor, knocked on the door of the lady living on the unit above hers and persuaded the elderly tenant to let her "climb down" from the balcony back onto her unit.

*"15th" is really "14th" because we have that same silly bugaboo about 13th floors as the US does. Ironically, this means the woman who fell really lived on ... the 13th floor! (insert shock stinger music here)

Suffice it to say that things ended tragically .

As details have emerged, the story gets even sadder. Before readers dismiss this as just a "boneheaded move," read the fuller backstory and remember your own younger days. I think of the times when I've done something equally risky as a result of determination (or simple bloody-mindedness), and indeed in something of an eerie postscript I must confess that not a week before this happened I had a dream in which I attempted to do the exact same thing (got locked out of unit, went upstairs and persuaded neighbour to let me climb down onto our balcony). In the dream, I was equally sure that I could do it as Mrs. Webb undoubtedly was. Once again we are reminded of our frailty and mortality, and how easily we ignore those factors in our day-to-day calculations.

Our sympathies to her husband, her family in Calgary and her co-workers here in town.