Holy Catfish, Take Two

I meant to go to bed early tonight, I swear. I had it all planned out - I'd be cuddled under my covers by half past one at the latest. Well... that hasn't exactly panned out. But it's all my own fault, really; I forgot about the missing doorknob.

I'd win any night owl competition with my family hands down. Pat's been asleep probably since ten, Ali turned out her light at eleven or so, and Michal disappeared at about ten past twelve. Even Chatty is curled up on an armchair in the living room, dozing under the glare of a forgotten floor lamp. Because tomorrow is a busy day, I forced myself away from distractions at 1.20. Time to wash my face and brush my teeth and wander up to bed.

Even though no one else is awake at this time, I locked the bathroom door behind me. Force of habit, I guess; I always slam the door and twist the iron latch that lies below the doorknob in one smooth motion. I mucked about with soap and lotion, rinsed my contact lenses in moisturizing solution, brushed and flossed my pearly whites. Then I turned to go, pleased at my relative lack of time wasting.

A slight problem: the bathroom door had no doorknob. It had a hole where the doorknob should be, and a rectangular rod (long and narrow, with a square face about a centimeter across pointing toward me) sitting within the hole where the doorknob should be, but no actual piece of machinery that could be twisted and pulled in order to open the door.

There used to be a doorknob. In fact, there was one up until yesterday. It fell off when Ali was in there, and she had to knock until someone came to let her out. We managed to reaffix the outer knob to the rod, but a screw was missing from the inner knob, so the single doorknob was just kind of shoved back into its hole looking like a lopsided barbell. Now it's rather deceptive; you forget that the doorknob is broken because all looks well from the outside.

So there I was, trapped in the bathroom at 1.30 a.m., with all my family sleeping soundly a floor above. Upon realizing the lack of doorknobery, I managed to gasp in horror and utter an appalled, "Shoot," at virtually the same time. That indulgence taken care of, I set about trying to figure out how to free myself.

First, I unlocked the door and tried to use the latch handle to pull the door open. No dice; the turning mechanism wasn't being moved, so the door wasn't budging.

Next, I looked down the laundry chute; it's a narrow tin tube that empties onto the cement floor of our basement. I thought I could possibly just brace my hands and feet on the sides of the chute and clamber down... but the basement lights were all off, and there's a heating duct tube that protrudes into the chute about halfway down so that even laundry gets stuck, and I'm a wee bit bulkier than laundry. That plan quickly went out the window.

"The window... hmm... I bet I could crawl out the window," I thought craftily. "I'm on the first floor, so even though there would be a five-or-more-foot drop from the window ledge to the ground [since our first floor is actually up several steps], I'd be perfectly fine. Good plan, Emily, good plan."

"Wait a mo'... It's 1.30. All the doors to the house are locked, and you don't have keys. Or a phone. Or any way of waking up the sleeping ones to let you in. Bad plan, Emily, bad plan."

I turned back toward the door, ruing my fierce desire for privacy. "I suppose I could sleep in here... the bathmat's kind of fluffy..." I sat down on the rug.

But I promptly stood up again. Give up like that? How could I?? I didn't have a tool kit or a credit card or a cell phone, but, dang it, this was a bathroom - surely there was some sort of implement I could use as a makeshift doorknob.

I reached into my makeup bag and pulled out the first shiny object I saw: my La Cross tweezer, a fabulous Target buy. Facing the knob-less door, I pinched the square end of the rod with the tweezer and twisted.

"Thud." The other side of the doorknob fell on the floor in the hallway outside the bathroom. Oops.

Too stubborn to give up because of a little thing like that, I continued twisting the rod, simultaneously pulling it toward me just for variety's sake. I felt a subtle shift in the mechanism... and the door opened! I was FREEEEEEEE!!!!

Yes, I just escaped from a locked bathroom using nothing but a tweezer. Take that, MacGyver.