It's no secret that I had a nasty week at work.
No, really. We've changed our
schedule seven times in the last ten days, I encountered alien life forms
amongst the staff, and my brief visit to the boss's office resulted in my
experiencing a lobotomy via osmosis.
So Friday's fiasco is the icing on the cake. Friday during my planning period, I get stuck
in the bathroom.
Next to my room and tucked into a nearly abandoned alcove
beneath the staircase is a teacher's bathroom.
It's a one-seater with a thick metal fire door (you know, in case the
toilet self-combusts), concrete block walls, no window, and it is about the
size of a small broom closet. There is a
metal handle to operate the latch itself so that the door doesn't automatically
swing open, but there is also a cheap hand-bolt lock about two feet above the
handle to actually lock the door.
With about fifteen minutes until my last class of the day, I
decide to pee. I mean, I can live
without going to the bathroom, but I'm still over an hour away from leaving for
the day, which, on this particular Friday afternoon means heading to the pub at
3:00. Might as well do a PBE, as my
friend Sal puts it: Preventive Bladder
Emptying.
I head down into the alcove to see if anyone is in the
teacher's bathroom. I don't see any
light coming from the crack at the bottom of the door, so I hit the handle that
releases the latch, go in, close the door, and hit the hand lock that is at eye
level. All is right with the world.
I do my business, wash my hands, and, less than a minute
after occupying the bathroom, I am ready to unoccupy the bathroom. I undo the lock, push down the door handle
and …
Nothing.
The handle moves up and own, but the latch itself, the metal
bar that rotates in and out of the handle connecting the inner mechanism to the
abutting flash plate in the door frame, does not move. I don't panic at first, but this sure is a
conundrum. It will be at least an hour
before the only teacher in the area, the Spanish teacher, is done with her
class and might happen to walk by.
Meanwhile, though, I have a class coming to my room in fifteen minutes,
and no way to contact anyone. I do not
have my phone with me, and there is no window for me to open and crawl out.
I have had a door handle break on me before, so I start
going through the mental possibilities.
If I can get someone's attention, the janitor can come, unscrew the
handle, and … Wait. No. The screws are on the inside of the door
handle. I'd have to unscrew the
mechanism in order to hand-operate the latch.
I look at the bottom of the door.
Nope. Not enough room to pass a
screwdriver through.
Well, the janitor can punch the metal bolts from the door
and remove the door from the outside, and then I'll be free! This will certainly work except for the one
main problem: the bolts are inside … with me.
I try the handle again and again and again and again. I have now been captive in the bathroom for
about three minutes. There is nothing to
do except call out for help. I refuse to
scream and yell. There are hundreds of
students in this end of the building. If
I'm going to make an ass of myself, I certainly hope it's in front of another
teacher.
I decide to try knocking from the inside. No one will hear me, probably, but maybe when
the students pass the nearby hallway in fifteen minutes, someone will alert a
teacher. I bang on the door three
times.
Suddenly from the other side I hear, "Are you stuck in
there?"
God! God heard me!
And God is a woman! Oh, thank
you, thank you, thank you!
"I believe I am," I reply.
"I'll go get help!" she yells, and I hear her feet
take off down the hallway.
In the meantime, I try the handle again and again and again
and … it clicks. I pull. The door opens. I stand there awaiting my would-be rescuers
and try the handle again with the door open.
It doesn't work. By some miracle,
it caught once and let me loose but will not catch again.
I tell the janitor who has come to my aid what has happened,
and, after some teasing, he promises to fix the latch mechanism. Meanwhile, the young woman who rescued me
comes by.
"I was just about to go in there," she
explains.
"Well," I assure her, "your timing is
perfect. I had just realized I was
trapped." We laugh together, and we
both vow never to use that bathroom again.
Truthfully, I'm not sure I'm going to use any of the self-contained,
closet-sized potties at that school for the rest of my life. I'll go into the girls' rooms and tinkle with
the children because at least I can crawl under the stall door if need be.
Honestly, though, as funny as it is and as minor as it is --
I am only stuck in there for about five minutes -- I am extremely
claustrophobic, and I truly did start having a panic attack while I was in
there. Although I'm chuckling about it
now, it really isn't that funny. Granted
I had plenty of toilet paper, a potty, and all the water from the sink I could
drink, but I am not one for enclosed spaces.
I've been stuck in an elevator, too, and I didn't care for that, either.
Of all people, and after the absolute suck-ass week I had at
work, to get stuck in the lone, out of the way, never passed by, concrete
mausoleum of a bathroom is poetic justice.
My week certainly couldn't have ended any other way.
But if I'd missed the pub because I was stuck in the
bathroom, someone would've had to pass me a very long straw through the vent
and made sure it was connected to a margarita.
That's all I'm going to say about that.
