I’ve had this post sitting around as a draft for like two months now. Partly because I was saving it for a slow day, and mostly because I started it and then never got around to finishing.

It’s about a little ordeal I had a couple of years ago, so it’s not really time sensitive or anything.

As some of you may remember, my pal Holz actually blogged about it back then. After I had emailed him about my experience, he asked my permission to publish it on his Stomach Pains, and I agreed.

The source of the email was left anonymous, presumably to protect the stupid (i.e. me). Well, now that some time has passed, I wanted to give the story a rewrite and claim it as my own.

So it’s really, really weird that just when I was getting ready to publish it, Holz pulled his old post from the depths of his archives to be included in his “Past Lives” section.

It must be our 7/11 twin telepathy working in mysterious ways.

UPDATE: This post has been blogicized. [Philadelphia Will Do]

Anyway, here’s my story…

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It was late one Sunday night in May. Edo was off on one of his pilgrimages to the motherland, and I was alone in our old apartment.

Exhausted from the wild orgy that had been raging all weekend, I washed away the sin with a long, hot shower and planned to get ready for bed. I stepped out of the tub, wrapped a towel around my hair, and threw on my robe.

But as I went to leave the bathroom, I couldn’t get the door open! The knob just spun around and around and around… and the door stayed shut.

Uh-oh.

Then I recalled how earlier in the weekend, the knob on the outside of the door had come off in my hand. “That’s not good,” I thought. But I didn’t want to interrupt the lovefest, so I just stuck it back in and planned to call maintenance on Monday. In hindsight, that may not have been the best decision I’ve ever made.

After remembering that, I started to get a little panicky.

What if I don’t get out of here in time for work tomorrow?!

Worse yet, what if I get hungry?!!

There’s plenty of water, but I don’t think any of these plants are edible…

“Calm down,” I told myself. “Think! What would MacGyver do?”

I took a deep breath and looked around the bathroom to see if I could find anything of use. First, I attempted to extract the screws in the doorknob with my nail file. The result? One bent nail file. Those screws had spent the last 40 years rusting solidly into that thing, and they weren’t going anywhere.

I decided I had no choice but to remove the doorknob by force. I figured that once the knob was gone, I could just pull the little metal slide thingy with my finger and open the door. Easy, right? Now, how to get it off…

I grabbed my can of shaving gel, and began to bang away at the doorknob. Oh… did I mention that the knob was made of solid glass? Because it was. Right, well the glass part came off and broke into pieces on the floor (all around my bare feet). And the door? Still stuck.

You see, the glass part fell off, but the metal part attaching it to the door did not. So I started whacking at that, too, but I grew worried that the can would bust open, and I had no idea what would happen if it did. You know, with the contents under pressure and all. I tried using a larger can—of Lysol, but still no luck (and the fear of aerosol explosion persisted).

So there I was, 1:00 in the morning, stuck in my bathroom wearing nothing but a robe and a towel on my head.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I went to the window and started calling for help. I felt like the biggest idiot to ever live.

Eventually, a voice that sounded a lot like Apu from the Simpsons called out to me “Are you okay?” It was my neighbor in the apartment directly above me. I think it only took about 5 or 10 minutes for him to answer my distress call, but it felt like an eternity.

“Yes, I’m fine, but I seem to be stuck in my bathroom. Do you think you could call someone?”

“Okay. Hold on.”

Two minutes later, he yelled back to me “I’ve called 911. They should be here shortly.”

Uhhh… when I asked him to call someone? I was thinking of something more like the building manager, and not so much like the city’s emergency services.

But I had a bigger problem than my neighbor calling in the cavalry. The door to my apartment was locked. And it wasn’t just locked once. No…. in the interest of extra security, I had locked the second super special lock that has no key and could only be opened from the inside. Because it made me feel safe. Indeed.

So really, even if the building manager (who does not live on site) had been called, there would have been no way for him to get into my apartment.

Anyway, the cops arrived about three minutes later. Literally. I’m not even joking. One of them went out on the fire escape where she could talk to me through the window, and I could hear the others outside in the main hallway.

I was hoping the cops would be able to pick the locks open, but of course they couldn’t (or wouldn’t, I wasn’t really clear on that). They just kept asking me if I wanted them to break down the door. I asked if they could just call a locksmith. I said I’d even wait until morning for a locksmith.

Their response? “Ma’am, we can’t do that. We’re just responding to an emergency call. All we can do is break down the door.”

Seriously? Seriously?!

It was at that point that I really started to worry.

Having them break down my door would have been only slightly better than still being stuck in the bathroom. Okay, so yes, at least I wouldn’t be hungry. But how could I sleep, or leave and go to work the next day with no door to the apartment?!

So they asked me if I could break down the bathroom door myself. I said I’d been trying that, but I just didn’t have the right implements to do it. And the door was way too solid for me to simply throw myself at it and crash through.

Then things finally started going my way. I don’t know who came up with the idea, but he or she deserves some credit here. The cops ended up borrowing a hammer from my neighbors upstairs and used a rope to lower it to me through the window.

With the hammer, I was able to get the rest of the door knob off. But the freaking slide bar thing still wouldn’t budge!! I even tried using a broken wall hook to get in there and move it. No luck.

So I had to hammer a little more. Quite a bit more, actually. In the process, one of our speakers fell off the wall and nearly hit me in the head. It crashed into the sink and knocked a bunch of stuff all over the floor, prompting a stern “You okay in there ma’am?” from the cops.

Eventually, around 2:00 AM, with the door partially destroyed, I was able to break the metal slide, and I finally escaped from my bathroom.

In my robe and towel, I opened my apartment door to find my upstairs neighbor and five—yes, I said five—cops (three uniforms and two plain clothes). Just for little ol’ me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really grateful for the attention and assistance, but several people were probably mugged in West Philly while the cops were there helping me.

Heh, I can only imagine the conversation after they left…. I should get a hold of that police report sometime. I bet it’s a good read.

To this day, my family still jokes about how “Kate never goes to the bathroom without a hammer and her cell phone.” And I lost the right to make fun of Grandma for getting the two of us locked out on her balcony.

But at least I got this amusing story out of it.

Here’s the original post on Holz’s blog: A Funny Story From a Friend. Unfortunately, the comments are gone now, and I don’t think I ever read them. I would like to have known what people said when they didn’t know it was me!