A bit of humor for the first post of 2010:
It was Sunday evening almost two weeks ago and we had just gotten back from picking our neighbor's daughter up from work (no, we didn't get a car, we picked her up in their car while the rest of them were on vacation) when we discovered we needed to run next door to ask her a question.
Now, our door knob had been giving us some trouble for a week or so at this point, nothing concerning, really. Every once in awhile the latch would just get stuck inside the door and we had to jiggle the handle to get it to come back out. We figured that eventually we would get annoyed enough with it that we would call the apartment managers and have them send the fix-it man with some WD-40 to take care of it. We did think it was a little curious that it was getting stuck because when we moved in they proudly told us that the door jamb was new and that the door had just been fitted with a brand-spanking new doorknob and a deadbolt! I think we're the only apartment in the complex that has a deadbolt.
So, I hopped up and went to the door to ask our neighbor the question. But, upon reaching the door, I couldn't get it to open. Kind of embarrassing to not be able to open your own front door, but no big deal. I blamed it on slippery hands and called in reinforcements, confident Nate could get it open with his man hands. No luck.
So we sheepishly called up our friend, Josh who lives a few doors down and asked him to come and let us out. Thinking "we are definitely calling in a maintenance request first thing tomorrow." Josh shows up with kids in tow and we have a good chuckle as we explain our situation through the window. Until Josh tries to open the door. Nothing.
Josh's wife, Julie, arrives home at this point and goes to tell the managers (who are also members of our ward) that we are locked IN our apartment. Oh, how I wish I could have seen the look on his face as she told him. No, this is not a practical joke; they really are stuck inside their own apartment.
And so the manager comes up to appraise the situation. He tries the doorknob. "Yes," we tell him, "we're sure that the doorknob is unlocked." We tried several different tactics, poke this turn that, shove a wire in there, poke it with a knife but to no avail. So, the window screen came off, followed by the glass louvers and in climbed our apartment manager. No one had any idea why the door was stuck or how to get it open again, so he eventually wound up tearing out the old knob and replacing it (why he had a brand-new spare door knob lying around, I don't know, but I am very grateful for it) as well as chipping away some of the door jamb so the bolts fit better. An hour and a half later we were freed.
Though I didn't like having to make our manager work on a Sunday I'm glad it happened when it did. Imagine how I would have sounded on Monday morning calling in to my new job to apologize for being late because I was locked IN my apartment!
