Permission to Live
Remember when I wrote my post on how to have a sex life in spite of your kids? Well, my strategies have been severely challenged.
We settled the kids in for breakfast and snuck off to the bedroom to spend a quick moment together.
Everything went swimmingly, until we tried to leave our bedroom 10 minutes later.
Our door was jammed. The lock was frozen in place and no amount of jiggling twisting or banging on the handle was budging it. We had no phone, and no one to call even if we had a phone. There was no other door out of our bedroom. We were trapped and our 3 young children had the run of the house!
When we couldn’t get the handle to budge, my husband decided to climb out of the window. The doors were still locked from the night before, but hopefully ringing the doorbell would convince our kids to open the front door before he froze to death in the snow. After putting on whatever clothing we found lying around our bedroom he peeled the screen off the window and hauled himself up onto the changing table to climb out.
It was a long way down, we live in a bi-level, but still!
So we decided to try the door again. I found a baby spoon lying on the bookcase, and he tried to use to pry the pins out of the hinges. Hooray! The bottom pin came out easily! Escape was in our grasp! Alas, no such luck. The spoon was too blunt to fit in the crack of the top hinge.
We were back to the window.
This time he got about half way out, but there were no footholds or handholds and jumping down that distance was kind of scary, what if he broke a leg or something? (Plus I was convinced that the people waiting for the bus on the corner were going to call the police any minute.)
So he hauled himself back in.
After closing the window we decided to call for our 3 year old. At first there was no response, turns out the kids had gone back downstairs to watch cartoons. But with both of us bellowing she finally heard us and came up the stairs.
Ms Action: “Yes?”
Me: (through the door) “Hey Honey, we can’t get out of our room because the door is stuck, can you run over to the kitchen and bring us a knife?”
Ms Action: “Sure!”
She trotted into the kitchen, came back right away and slid a butter knife under the door. Right away my husband began chiseling at the pin in the top hinge again. The butter knife worked much better than the spoon had, and he was making pretty good progress using a Christmas mug to tap the end of the knife.
By now Ms Drama had arrived upstairs.
Ms Drama: “Come out mom!” (Jiggling the door handle)
Me: “The door is stuck baby, so we can’t get out. But Daddy is going to get the door open.“
Ms Drama: (Weeping) “MaaaaMaaaa!”
Ms Action: (The wailing is muffled as she gives Ms Drama a hug) “It’s OK! Why don’t you go lay down and take a nap?”
The pin was starting to budge! I hold the door in place so the hinges won’t twist. Just about the time that the top pin comes free, the Christmas mug/ hammer shatters and glass rains down all over the entryway. Brushing off the glass my husband tries to yank the door out of the frame, but the lock is still holding well and the door is barely budging. Maybe if we get the doorknob off we can trip the lock?
Me: “Honey? Can you get mommy a screwdriver? In mommies tool box in the bathroom?”
Ms Action: (Completely unfazed) “A screwdriver? Sure!”
After rummaging for a moment she tells me there is no screwdriver in my toolbox. I direct her to the the living room bookcase and eventually she returns with a small Phillips (thank goodness!) screwdriver. The handle is too large to shove under the door, so my husband braces his feet against the frame and yanks the corner of door out about 2 inches and I grab the screwdriver before the door springs back into it’s frame. (This door must have been built back in the days when things weren’t supposed to break!)
We manage to unscrew the door knob, the children gasp delightedly as the handle falls off into the hallway. “Mama, your door is broken!” They inform me through the door. I assure them that we know the door is broken and that we are trying to fix it.
Even though we can now see the lock gears, we still can’t get anything to move, the lock is determined to hold. The only way out is to wrench that door out of the frame somehow.
So in the midst of broken glass, super husband strains and groans and wrenches at the door until with a loud popping splintering noise, the door pops out of the frame, and we are free!
We laughed. I cleaned up glass and tacked up a blanket in our doorway, Hubby ran off to work 45 minutes late, and miraculously, Ms Pooky was still sitting contentedly in her highchair with her cheerios.
So, that whole thing about locking your door? Scratch that. You may never get out.
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