I recently had an amusing
experience in the
men's room at work. I went
in, took care of my
business and went to
unlock the door to the
stall and
leave.
click.
Uh oh, it's stuck.
click click click click
Argh, the lock won't turn.
bang bang
No use.
But wait -- there was someone else in the
restroom, washing his hands. Who was it?
Someone I know? Someone I can ask for help? Wait a
minute --
ask for help?
How
pathetic is that? "Er, excuse me. Yeah, yeah, you. See, I'm kind of, uh, stuck
in here. Can you
fetch some help?" I thought of
Lassie, and the
cliché scene in
which
communicates someone's distress to that
telepathic little boy. "What's that
Lassie? Someone is trapped in a restroom
stall?!" I decided against asking for
help. Besides, what possible help could anyone offer me; the
lock was on the inside.
After considering that, there remained only one question: over or under? I
pondered this as the
anonymous hand washer finished up and left. I sat in the
silence of the empty restroom for a moment. I had the almost
irrepressible urge to
pound on the door and scream "HELP! HELP! GET ME OUT OF HERE!"
The gap from
the floor to the bottom of the door measured about a foot and half and the door
extended upwards about 6 feet high. With very few footholds, the door would not be
trivial to scale, but I decided that would be a
preferable alternative to
crawling on the restroom floor, even though it was
relatively clean as far as
restrooms go.
I stood on the
toilet, placed a hand on the side wall of the
stall for support, and
leapt towards the door. I grabbed the top of the door with both hands, supporting
myself. With my
upper body leaning over the top of the door, I just had to swing my
legs over and I'd be
free. Almost there.
Then I hear the
restroom door start to open.
shit.
To avoid the
humiliating indignity of having some
management type see their
sysadmin hanging halfway over the restroom door, I decided to drop back down and
pretend everything was normal.
Nothing to see here, move along.
As I sat and waited for the
urinator to finish up, I was struck by the
absurdity of
the situation and laughter began to
swell up inside me. A muffled
giggle quickly
turned into
outright,
unrestrained laughter. The
urinator must have been
thoroughly bewildered by what I could have possibly found so
comical about going to
the restroom (and this
thought, of course, only served to make me laugh even harder).
As soon as the
urinator left, I quickly hopped back onto the toilet, grabbed the
wall, and launched myself over the door in one swift motion,
ninja style.
I washed my hands and quickly made my exit, chuckling to myself.
I think I'll avoid that stall in the future...