So I got locked in the bathroom today...

And it wasn't even my own bathroom, at home. No, that would be much too easy, and so much less embarrassing. No, in typical Hava-style, I got locked into a bathroom, in someone else's apartment.

It all started when a friend of mine offered to let me clean an apartment to make a little extra cash on the side. All nice and dandy, or so I thought. My friend manages a large apartment complex, and she happened to have an apartment come empty, that needed to be cleaned before the next tenant could move in. No problem! I hate cleaning (anyone who has visited my home can attest to that fact!) but getting paid to clean was another thing entirely. I went in, bucket in hand, and happily started scrubbing. The hubby of my friend, who does all of the maintenance on the building, had removed all of the doorknobs on every door in the apartment, thereby making it much easier to paint them all. They had long-since been painted, but the knobs had not been put back on yet. He left the metal part in the doors, the part that the knobs operate, but the knobs themselves were gone.

I didn't pay much attention to any of that. I tend to be the sort of person who wanders around in my own la-la land, until something jerks me back down to earth. Sometimes that landing can be awfully hard, as I found out today. :P

I took a quick break from cleaning, and went into the bathroom. I closed the door behind me, did my business, washed my hands and went to the door, thinking all the while about everything else that needed to be done. After a couple of seconds of standing at the door, I realized that the doorknob that I had been subconsciously grabbing for was not there. I looked down to where it should have been, where my hand had been grabbing just air and realized sure enough, there was no doorknob.

I didn't panic, not at first. I laughed at myself for not realizing it sooner, and then I went about trying to get the metal parts inside of the door to move, to let me out. I am not in a habit of taking doorknobs apart and studying how they work (when was the last time you tore your door knobs apart?) so at this point, I was lost. I tried pushing, pulling, lifting up, twisting...nothing.

The panic starts to creep up a little bit more. I wasn't completely worried, because I knew that somebody would come looking for me eventually, (hey, has anyone seen Hava today?) but I have never been the kind to sit around and wait for something to happen. Especially not when I am trapped in a bathroom that has no outside window. There was only way out of that bathroom, but I certainly wasn't having any luck with that route.

I looked around the bathroom, evaluating my options. I could try switching the light on and off...and what? Annoy the fly that was flying over my head in dizzying circles? Right then, the fly goes through the hole in the door, where the doorknob was supposed to be at, and I stared longingly after it. That was the first time (and I imagine the last time!) I have ever wished I was a fly.

Uummm, I could try flushing the toilet over and over again! Yeeeaaahh, that wasn't going to do a thing, except waste perfectly good water. Right then, I heard my friends walking around in the apartment above me. Luckily for me, the apartment I was cleaning was directly underneath the apartment that my friends live in. I knew I had to get lucky some day! But, how to get their attention? Staring at the ceiling certainly wasn't doing the trick.

AH-HA! I spied the towel rack and knew I was in business. I quickly removed the rod and started hitting the roof of the bathroom with it. "DONOVAN!!!" I'm yelling. "DONOVAN, HELP ME!!!!!" Pound, pound, pound...

Nothing.

I am peering through the hole in the door, through where the handle was supposed to be at, and I see my friend's child go running past the apartment. "ELIGH!!!!!" I screaming. Nothing.

Back to the rod I go. I am trying not to make any holes in the ceiling, because they may not be happy with me if I pound holes into their ceilings that they then have to fix, so I am trying to gently pound, if there is such a thing.

About 5 hours later (okay, maybe it was only 5 minutes later, but close enough!) I hear, "Havilah?" Salvation! Donovan had heard me! I start yelling, "In the bathroom! In the bathroom!" He opens up the front door to the apartment and just starts laughing. I thought he wouldn't be able to make it across the room, he was laughing so hard.

Even though I was more than a little freaked out by that point (what happens if no one comes looking for me for a couple of hours? I have got better things to do than to stare at a toilet!) it suddenly hits me--this is freakin' hilarious!!!!! I start laughing too, and by time Donovan got the door open, we were both laughing so hard we were having a hard time standing up.

The funniest part of all? I kept thinking, "I can't wait to get home to write this in my blog!" And that is when I realized I was truly addicted to posting. Only 3 posts in, and I am already unstoppable.

Heaven help us all, eh?

Hava