A Funny Story: When I Rescued Mom and Dad with a Karate Kick

C: It was late, and my two younger siblings and I were asleep in our rooms, when I felt myself slowly waking up. 

I kept hearing weird sounds. I was half asleep, so I was still partly in my dream, but it sounded like muffled voices shouting something over the white noise machine in our bedroom.

Then my brother ran into my room and shook me awake. 

“Mom and Dad are stuck in the bathroom!” he exclaimed, barely able to contain his excitement over such a calamity.

So, that’s what I was hearing. Mom and Dad were yelling for me and trying to pull the bathroom door open. I immediately jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom door.  I was pretty excited myself. Why would my parents be stuck in the bathroom?

“Caseigh?” my dad said from the other side, trying to keep me calm, so that I wouldn’t make my little sister even more upset,”The doorknob won’t turn, and we can’t get out. Can you get the toolbox from the basement, so that I can try to take the knob off?”

I thought that the whole situation was preposterous. We have one little bathroom upstairs with one sink, and my parents like to talk over the day while flossing their teeth and taking out their contacts. They are weird. And now they are stuck in a locked bathroom? I briefly considered leaving them in there and eating vanilla ice cream all night, but my sister thought that she’d never see her parents again and was inconsolable. So, I went to go get the toolbox.

S: Ok, is it really that weird that we brush our teeth together? Who else would remind me not to brush too hard?

When Chip and I realized that our door handle just wouldn’t turn, we could hardly believe it ourselves. How could we be locked from the inside?! Then we were just so grateful it was us and not one of the kids who was stuck inside. It took a while for us to get over the shock and ridiculousness of the situation and stop laughing. We tried to get ourselves out, we really did, though I’m not much help when it comes to understanding the mechanics of cheap locks degraded by decades of use.

Anyways, after a more sober assessment of how good and stuck we were, we decided, though it was late and we’d already spent half the night getting the younger kids to bed, that we needed Caseigh’s help. We started yelling for her. Loudly and repeatedly. Now, she’s usually a light sleeper. But that night, she would not wake. We kept going for a long while, trying to be loud enough to awaken her but calm enough to avoid raising panic in any of the kids. Once Caseigh was up, she was eager to come to the rescue. Still waiting for those chai molasses cookies, but boy, she’s good in a pinch.

C: For a while I was running up and down the two sets of stairs in our house, trying to get my parents to explain exactly where this toolbox was. Eventually, I found it, took out the screwdriver, and tried to shove it under the door. The handle was too big, and it got stuck. I yanked it back out and took off the screw bits and slid those under the door instead. After a long time of listening to them fiddle around, they managed to remove the door handle!

But then we realized that the lock itself would not release. Even though the handle was out, the lock was still stuck, and we couldn’t open the door. They were so close! At least there was a small hole in the door where the handle had been where I could talk and see through. Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!

They decided to try to take the pins out of the door hinges. I couldn’t fit the hammer under the door, so I gave them a wrench. It took a while, but eventually they were able to push the pins out using the screwdriver bit as a lever and the wrench as a hammer. Yay! 

Okay, we just had to get the door out of the hinges, now that the pins were removed. The problem was that the only space between the door and the doorframe where they could pull the door out was at the bottom of the door in the space where I had been giving them tools. But, if they only pulled from the bottom the door, it would angle, and the top hinges would wedge together.

I could hear my parents discussing the options. I continued trying to convince my sister that everything would be ok. She was still scared and now she was also tired. It had been over an hour since I had woken up, and even for my brother, the excitement was wearing thin. He didn’t want to miss anything, but I could tell that he just wanted to go back to bed.

S: We were in there MacGyvering our way out of multiple mechanical predicaments, Chip and I on one side of the door, and Caseigh on the other. Also, we were trying to manage the big emotions of our little ones, again with Chip and I on one side of the door, and Caseigh on the other. I am proud to say that Caseigh knows the difference between a phillips and a flathead screwdriver head, and also she can be a pretty great big sister.

C: Back to the escape room. The door had to be removed out of the hinges. But how?

Then, Mom and Dad told me that it is was up to me. Me? I was going to be the hero of this crazy scenario? Ok, yes! Yes!

They told me to knock the door straight out. I was worried that the door would crash onto my parents’ heads in our tiny bathroom, so I started by pounding on it with my fist. That did nothing. 

They told me, “Kick it down, Caseigh!”  

My parents just told me to kick down the door? I was going to be the hero and rescue my parents by kicking down a door? I knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I round up all my energy and focus. I pivoted and kicked as hard as I could. They caught the door, did not die, and I went to church the next day telling the story in full detail to everyone I saw. 

And that’s how I used my karate kick to rescue my parents. Hi – ya!

S: Caseigh, if you want a tub of vanilla ice cream for saving us, you can go right on ahead.