Bio byte

[scarfman]

In the mid-80s I once roomed with philfoglio for a year or so. One day I went down to the building's basement to the storage locker for our apartment. There were a bunch of people into one of the other storage lockers at the time, so I didn't have to myself unlock the padlock on the basement door. They seemed to have finished up while I was in my locker. When I came out of my storage locker, the first thing I noticed was that all the lights were out. It wasn't pitch black, but the lights were out. I believe I made the mental journey from "the lights are out" to "the door out must now have a padlock on the other side of it" in less time than it took me to make the journey from my storage locker to the door. Sure enough, I was locked in.

Phil wasn't home at the time, which was late morning or midday on a Saturday. But we were hosting a Moebius Theatre rehearsal that evening, so I knew he'd be home at the latest in time for that. And the building's fusebox was in the basement. If I wasn't out of there by nineteen hundred I could turn off my apartment's power and draw attention to the basement. Having deduced that I was going to miss no more than one meal, I set about getting myself out.

The padlock hinge was bolted to the door. I don't remember the arrangement clearly but it was such that I decided, if I could unscrew the nuts on this side of the door, I could get out. Or maybe it was the door's hinges I needed to remove. Anyway, muttering to myself, "Right for tight, left for loose" (unlike Arthur Dent, I listened what my mother told me when I was young), I set about removing the bolt nuts.

At one point while I was working, I heard someone coming down the back stairs (there may have been a parking lot in the back of the building; I wouldn't remember since neither Phil nor I had a car). All I had to do to be released was to call out to the other resident as he or she passed by. But I didn't. I wanted too badly to see whether I could get myself out of this by myself.

(Or maybe I was embarrasssed. Whatever.)

The last of the bolt nuts was jammed, or the threads stripped or something, and the bolt itself was mangled so it was hard to get a grip on. I had to hunt up something to try to get a grip on it, I don't remember what. It was while I was occupied with that last bolt - and resigning myself to missing that meal - that I heard a guy call from the other side of the door, "Who's there?"

Not being acquainted with my neighbors or vice versa, I answered with my apartment number.

The neighbor got me out. Later, talking to a Moebian arriving for rehearsal, he said, "He was so calm!" billroper's response to hearing the story was, "I hope I'm never stranded on a desert island with Paul. When the helicopter flies over and drops the rope ladder, Paul will wave them off and say, 'No thanks, I want to see if I can get myself out of it!'"

Comments

[larksilver.livejournal.com]

I've done that very thing, waving off help just to see if I could do something.

Sure, help is nice, but it's so satisfying when you struggle those last few yards on your own.