About twenty minutes ago Lily came up to me and said "Amelia is locked in the bathroom!" Sure enough, the door to our downstairs bathroom was closed and locked, and by the amount of knocking and sobbing coming from the other side it was clear that Amelia was indeed locked in. I felt a bit frantic, because I don't know how to open our locks from the other side. Also, she was in there in the dark. She was not in any state to find the stool and turn on the light in the dark. I can only imagine how horrified I would have been at the age of two to have that happen to me.
Now, our locks are not the push button kind - they are the turning kind. I've heard it is possible to unlock them by sticking a little screwdriver in there and turning it, but I've never been successful with that. I tried calling a couple of my neighbors with children that I'm pretty sure would have faced this situation before, but I guess no one was up for facing a call from me at 7:40 am. That left me with my tried and true strategy for any crisis - I called my parents. It was a last resort because it is an hour earlier in Utah, and I know 6:40 in the morning is not their preferred wake-up hour, but I was desperate.
I was worried about removing the door knob because it seems like I'd heard some stories about how removing the doorknob is a bad thing to do and can make it impossible to open the door. Anyway, with my dad's encouragement, I did remove the door knob on my side, and then used a screwdriver to twist the lock and then got the door open by pulling the rod tight and turning it to set Amelia free. I tried putting the removed part of the door knob back on, and I did, but I can't get the screws to tighten more than half an inch or so. Oh well. At least the door knob is functional, if a little loose. I'll leave that last part of the project for Tyler so he can feel a part of the whole adventure. (Especially since he didn't answer his phone either.)
2 comments:
Isn't it great that you can still call your parents in a pinch and they won't be all, "You're a grown up. Figure it out yourself." A few months ago my car wouldn't start and I instantly called my dad, even though I knew there wasn't much he could do. It helped.
Oh no! Poor Amelia! One time, when I was a teenager, my dad had been painting the bathroom so the doorknobs were off. He told us how to open the door with the screwdriver. I went into the bathroom and closed the door and then for the life of me, I could not get it opened again. I was banging on the door, stomping my feet, anything so someone would hear me. Then I decided to play Hansel & Gretel & I tossed little bits of tissue out of the doorknob hole just in case someone would see it and come to help me. Eventually my dad heard me stomping on the floor and rescued me. It was very traumatic, and I was much older than Amelia! She should get extra ice cream tonight! And I should get extra just for having to think about that again!!
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