A.R. Van Halleorg

A small tale of my adventure.

For a while now, I’ve had supplies and equipment to work on chain-mail. No, not the sort you get in the post or e-mail. I mean the sort that you’d have worn in medieval time. It’s a little hobby that I picked up a few years ago and just had a knack for it.

I love doing the metal weaves. From the English 4-1 to the Japanese 12 in 2, it’s the most interesting hobby I’ve had. I don’t consider writing a hobby. I’ve been doing that since I was 4 years old. It’s a love and passion, it’s different.

Anyways, so one day my toilet was acting up and the chain in the bowl broke off from the black bit that lets you flush the toilet. So, the only tools I have around the house are a screwdriver, the Ikea Alan keys, wire-cutters (to cut metal coils into rings), and several sets of pliers, all under the size of a dry-erase marker.

Obviously, my first thought is…let’s use my tiny pliers to fix the parts in the toilet. So after replacing the black bit and reconnecting the chain, all was well with the world and true to my lazy self, I left the pliers in the bathroom.

I spent the better part of the next few weeks, contemplating the pliers and telling myself that I would finally get off my butt and put them where they belong.

Weeks later, after spraining my ankle/mildly fracturing a bone in my foot (it still hurts like hell and it’s been 3 weeks now), I found myself shut in my bathroom. The door that had been giving me a little crap for the last few days had finally given out.

It seemed that no matter how much I jiggled the knob and pulled at it, it wouldn’t budge. Now, there’s something you ought to know, I’m rather claustrophobic, and there’s only one way to stay come in that kind of situation. Make a list. So that’s exactly what I did.

1. Find something to jam in the crack of the door to try to move the latch.

Apparently I don’t really have anything useful that fits. Toilet paper didn’t work. Floss sticks didn’t work. Random bits of cardboard from the Q-Tip box didn’t work. I was thus beginning to panic that my one-item list was not going to get me out of that bathroom. So I looked around some more and found that pair of pliers I kept on forgetting about.

2. Use the pliers to attempt the following in order:
- Unscrew the knob and pull it out to fix the bit on the inside.
– Attack the hinges to pull the door out.

Well. I tried those. Unscrewing the knob was working so well, until the knob wouldn’t come off. I went a little Xena on it and it finally came off. My injured foot was not enjoying the fact that I’d used it to brace myself against the door to pull that knob off. Suffice it to say, my journey did not end there. The knob fell off and the inner part was completely and utterly jammed.

So I tried to attack the hinges. Now, anyone who has ever lived in an apartment building knows how many times those things get painted and repainted. You can begin to imagine the trouble I had trying to even REACH the hinges through 7 layers of crusty paint. Let’s just say that I gave up on that.

I stopped then for a moment to contemplate my predicament and began to laugh. I’d spent the better part of the 3 weeks prior working on my outline for Nanowrimo (National Writer’s Month) and my character dies in a box in the ground at the start of the story, unable to get out. I thought it was mildly ironic that I should find myself trapped in a bathroom with no way out.

And to make matters worse, I’m the type of person who goes a little overboard on the protection and put one of those fancy hotel bolts on my front door. No one was getting in to my apartment in order to help me without a good old fashioned police battering-ram. Or smashing my windows.

So I began to think, what do I really want to sacrifice? My front door, my windows, or my bathroom door that I could live without? The bathroom door won out and I made the conscious decision to take it apart. I tried my best to avoid damaging it, but at this point, I needed some good ol’ fresh air.

I noticed then that the bit of wood around the doorknob was rather flimsy and the perfect target for my escape route.

3. Use the tiny pliers to pick apart the door until there’s a hole big enough remove the latch.

I thought what a brilliant idea it was. Unlike my character, I would survive this day! So I began to take it apart and managed to reach the edge of the door rather quickly (20 minutes)…and then I realized just how thick the wood was around that part of the door…and where the screws were, holding the latch in place.

Epic fail.

4. Use the tiny pliers to pick apart the door until there’s a hole big enough for me to crawl through.

I took those tiny pliers, only barely bigger than 5 inches long and I started to take the door apart from the knob hole. Centimeter by centimeter, the hole started to get bigger…I never realized that there was cardboard inside the door. Did you know?…fascinating.

After sitting on the floor for a good hour, I finally started trying to rip up bigger chunks. After all that effort, I got a hole about 1.25 foot by ¾ of a foot through one part of my door and started kicking through to the other side. I even stopped in between trying to kick it with my injured foot to avoid bothering the neighbours who passed in the hall. I didn’t want to disturb them.

Finally, after almost 4 hours of being trapped, I managed to twist and bend my way through the hole I’d made for myself and find my freedom on the other side.

I went upstairs to my landlord, had him bust my bathroom door in and enjoyed the rest of my evening.

It was quite the adventure.

The end result before the landlord busted in the door.

The end result after the landlord busted the door in.