Accidents

I tend to be an accident-prone sort of person. Accidents of all varieties. Lately, these accidents have manifested themselves in the form of me locking myself into or out of places. Three times in three months.

Incident A: The laundry room. One day in February, 20 minutes before work, I went to toss in a load of laundry. The washing machine is behind the door, so I gave it a little push to make room for myself. The outside of the doorknob has one of those push-button locks. The kind that gets pushed in sometimes by accident. And it was pushed in by accident. There I was, locked in with Dexter, a load of laundry, and 3 barred windows. I started having visions of being stranded in there for days, having to eat rabbit and drink laundry water. Eventually I figured out a way to break a window that would let me reach around and unlock the door from the outside. I was sort of late for work that day.

Incident B: My house. Last month, very early on a Friday morning, I arrived at home and realized I'd lost my key. This was also the night that we were having a torrential downpour of "radioactive rain" from Japan. All the Koreans were panicking, thinking they would go bald if a drop touched their heads. That's beside the point. I remembered exactly when and where I dropped the key, so I called my friend and favorite bartender, Miya, who searched high and low and couldn't find it. I'd hidden a spare in my kitchen window, but that's a poor back-up plan if you happen to lock your windows. I spent the night on a friend's couch, and I'm 138% certain my boss thought less of me when he came to let me into my house the next morning.

Incident C: This week, the projection room of a movie theater. Yes, really. The sign looked like maybe it led to a bathroom. It did not. And the door locked behind me. Wouldn't it make sense to lock a projection room door from the outside and not the inside? Maybe. But you're clearly no one to be talking about sense, April. I found a stairwell and figured that if I kept going down, I'd come to a door leading to an elevator that would go back up to the theater, but all the doors were locked. As they should be at 1am. It was like being in a nightmare, and I'd left my phone inside. Not knowing what else to do, I went back to the projection room, located what seemed like a possible candidate for the door I'd come in, and started knocking. Nothing. Knocked harder. Nothing. Pounded with my fist. A Korean movie-goer opened the door and looked upset with me for disturbing the peace. I dove back into my seat, heart pounding and sweating bullets, and gave some incoherent, out-of-breath explanation to my friend who said, "I wondered what the pounding was about." My knuckles are still blue.