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resonantThis week's lesson: To qualify as a door, an object must both open and shut. If it does only one or the other, it's worse than useless.
We live in an old house with beautiful cut-glass doorknobs. They were all nice and tight when we moved in, but over the years, some of them have begun to slip a little, or to rattle a little. I always meant to get around to tightening them all up, but it never seemed like a priority.
Last night the spouse and I were lying in bed talking, and when I got up to use the bathroom, the doorknob came off in my hand, leaving us trapped in the bedroom.
I can only explain my panic by saying that I had left my glasses in the bathroom and that I don't wear underwear to bed (and I keep my clothes in another room), so I felt distinctly vulnerable. My loins were ungirded, you might say.
The light in that room needs a socket replaced -- another thing I've been meaning to get around to -- so we dragged over a tiny bedside lamp shaped like an airplane. In the light of its forty-watt bulb, we banged, rattled, and shouldered the door and attacked it with whatever tools come to hand in a bedroom -- ball-point pens, mostly. We succeeded only in knocking out the other half of the doorknob onto the hallway floor.
The kidlet was sound asleep in the next room, and banging and yelling didn't wake them. I'm not sure what they could have done if it had woken them.
Finally -- just when I was seriously considering whether I could climb out of a second-floor window, barefoot and with neither glasses nor underwear -- I remembered that when I cleaned out the spare room for the kidlet to move into, I put two big bins of office supplies in the bedroom to go through later. So I dug through and triumphantly came up with a letter opener. And, thank the gods who watch over people who are better with adverbs than with tools, the blade was wide enough to catch, and we were able to open the door and escape.
If I ever commission a picture of myself as a mythic heroine, I will definitely be armed with a letter opener. It's mightier than the sword.
And today I tightened all the doorknobs.
edited 2020 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns
We live in an old house with beautiful cut-glass doorknobs. They were all nice and tight when we moved in, but over the years, some of them have begun to slip a little, or to rattle a little. I always meant to get around to tightening them all up, but it never seemed like a priority.
Last night the spouse and I were lying in bed talking, and when I got up to use the bathroom, the doorknob came off in my hand, leaving us trapped in the bedroom.
I can only explain my panic by saying that I had left my glasses in the bathroom and that I don't wear underwear to bed (and I keep my clothes in another room), so I felt distinctly vulnerable. My loins were ungirded, you might say.
The light in that room needs a socket replaced -- another thing I've been meaning to get around to -- so we dragged over a tiny bedside lamp shaped like an airplane. In the light of its forty-watt bulb, we banged, rattled, and shouldered the door and attacked it with whatever tools come to hand in a bedroom -- ball-point pens, mostly. We succeeded only in knocking out the other half of the doorknob onto the hallway floor.
The kidlet was sound asleep in the next room, and banging and yelling didn't wake them. I'm not sure what they could have done if it had woken them.
Finally -- just when I was seriously considering whether I could climb out of a second-floor window, barefoot and with neither glasses nor underwear -- I remembered that when I cleaned out the spare room for the kidlet to move into, I put two big bins of office supplies in the bedroom to go through later. So I dug through and triumphantly came up with a letter opener. And, thank the gods who watch over people who are better with adverbs than with tools, the blade was wide enough to catch, and we were able to open the door and escape.
If I ever commission a picture of myself as a mythic heroine, I will definitely be armed with a letter opener. It's mightier than the sword.
And today I tightened all the doorknobs.
edited 2020 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns
(no subject)
Date: 10/15/09 04:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 11/6/09 01:04 am (UTC)