Okay, here's the situation: You're inside a stall in a public rest room and the door is stuck shut. According to my students, here are your options:
1. Kick down the door.
2. Stand on the toilet and climb over the stall door.
3. Crawl under the door.
My students were pretty evenly divided between the kickers and the crawlers, although many said they'd choke themselves to death with toilet paper before crawling on the floor of a public rest room.
No one suggested using a cell phone to call for help, which seems like the obvious solution once you get past the embarrassment of admitting being stuck in the rest room.
And no one suggested option 4: Pound on the door with your hand until you break the door...and your hand. But that's exactly what the student who found herself in that situation did, much to the detriment of her broken hand.
On the bright side, she exercised agency and physical strength to free herself from an impossible situation, and she now has a great story to tell whenever the conversation turns to Embarrassing Injuries I Have Known. (Did I ever tell you about the time I broke a toe while helping to carry a friend to a lake to throw her in? No? Well, it's still crooked...)
On the other hand, the other hand is unaccustomed to single-handedly taking notes, typing, tying shoes, or doing any of the millions of other things we usually do with our dominant hand.
So I guess the lesson here is simple: If you must use a public rest room, take a sledge-hammer.
2 comments:
Or wait until you hear someone else come in, then ask them to help or to go get help. Most public places, someone's going to come in sooner or later. Not at 2 a.m. at a highway rest area... but most of the time, someone will show up.
I agree. But I guess the desire to get free quickly could be overpowering.
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