Locked Out, or is it Locked in?

 Approximately 12:15 in the morning I became trapped in my bathroom for two and a half hours.  After helping me onto the thrown, my personal assistant, Beth decided she needed to go and get something from her car.  As soon as my front door closed behind her, my heart started racing.  Did she make sure the door was unlocked?  I didn’t think so, because she had slipped outside way too fast.  Why didn’t I have her wait until I got out of the bathroom, I berated myself.   If I had Beth wait, I would have been in my wheelchair and therefore able to open the door for Beth.  Then I could get myself nicely into bed, where I desperately wanted to be!  Sure enough, after a short time she pounded on my front door saying  she had locked herself out!  This is not the first time Beth has locked herself out of my place; I would think she had learned a lesson! 

I spent two plus hours trying to talk myself into getting off the toilet, opening the bathroom door, and then knee walking to my front door to open it.  Up until my mid teens I knee walked everywhere at home.  I would hop down off chairs, recliners, and sofas, land on my knees, and go do whatever was on my mind.  It wasn’t enough to just knee walk, I felt the need to run on them 75% of the time.  Family members grimaced every time they saw me running, and they would warn me that I was going blow out a knee one day.  I just thought like many kids do, that I was invincible.   

Most of my pants were worn thread bare at the knees.  It is safe to say, that when I got into high school,  I did not think it was cool to have pants with thread bare knees.  I started spending more and more time in my wheelchairs, which I told myself I would never do.  On top of that, my knees began to deteriorate, so I really had no choice, but to use my wheelchair full time.    It has been at least twenty-three years since I have spent large amounts of time knee walking.   My knees ached just thinking about walking on them again! 

If I was really going to be the heroine of the night, I needed to do a couple things first.  I wanted to pull up my pants, because if I did work myself into jumping off the toilet, and fell flat on my stomach, I wasn’t about to be rescued with half  massed pants!  I pushed myself with my legs up into an arch above the toilet, and with only my right hand, I inched the pants up.  Having my pants up served a duel purpose.  One.  My bum was no longer cold!   And two, I had an extra padding around my knees.  However, I wanted a softer landing strip, so I pulled the rug in front of the toilet over to the side where I would land.  There still was maybe a foot of bare floor between the rug and door.  I didn’t like that, so I tried pulling the hand towel down.  I thought I could kneel on it, and sort of slide within reach of the door knob.  I could barely touch the bottom of the towel, but I couldn’t grasp it firmly enough to yank it down.   So, there I was afraid I would harm myself by doing something I did thousands of times as a kid!  It definitely sucks growing older sometimes!  

Meanwhile, Beth went to find my apartment manager, but could not arouse either of the two on-site managers.  My neighbor was still up, so Beth told her about our plight and asked if she might use her phone.     She tried to call anyone she  could think of to come help us, only two people responded, and they didn’t  know how to help!  She even tried calling 911, but they didn’t think in an emergency.  How did they know it wasn’t truly an emergency?  By that point I could have fallen off my thrown, and had broken a hip!  Instead, they advised her to call a locksmith, and that’s what she did.  The man wanted $175 dollars to open my door!  

 There is a new rule I am enforcing in my home.  My personal assistants can not go outside when I am in the bathroom.  If they absolutely have to go outside, they have to make sure to take the apartment key, and or make certain the door is unlocked!  I will train everyone on