TEd, This reminds me of an incident in my own life from a couple of weeks ago, which Dag was bragging about to all his (male) friends at the factory. I think I will cut and paste from the email I wrote to my Mom about it. I was going to tell this story when it happened but I couldn't find a way to fit it in anywhere...Here is the excerpt from the email.
BTW, you need to know that our basement is unfinished, and you get into it by going in a little door set into the side of the house, rather than just going down stairs like in a normal house.
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So my excitement today (and boy, was it exciting) was that I managed to
accidentally lock myself in the basement when I was painting the shelves
this morning. See, the basement door is kept locked in two ways: the
handle locks, and we also have a padlock on a hasp on the outside of the
door. I bring the padlock into the basement with me when I work in there,
so some joker doesn't go past and lock me in. But. It didn't occur to me
that the hasp could get blown shut while the door was closed. I was
working this morning, and I was nearly finished. I had to go to the
bathroom but thought I could hold it a few minutes longer, rather than
running upstairs, taking my shoes off, etc., etc., then coming back
downstairs... I was finally done and went to open the door, dreaming of
the bathroom. The handle opened, the door opened a bit, and then wouldn't
budge. I realized after banging it a bit that the hasp had shut itself,
and even though there was no lock holding it shut, it didn't seem to want
to come open again. Now, Dag was at work already. There are windows in
the basement but they're high up relative to the floor, and probably a lot
of trouble to take apart. And I had to pee. So I kicked the door a bit,
bracing myself on the door frame because there are actually four steps
down to the basement floor from the doorway. It still didn't open. I was
worried about falling backward down the stairs, too, so I just grabbed the
door frame, and gave a good hard front snap kick with all my might to the
spot where I knew the hasp was. The door broke, and a piece six inches
wide and the height of the door went flying at the house next to us.
Great! I was out - but the door was broken. The door is about four feet
tall, and I'd broken off a whole vertical section, about a 2-by-6, where
the handle had been. I could see that it was a tongue-and-groove sort of
thing, and I'd blasted off the whole section. Our bikes are down there,
and the lawnmower. Not much else of value, but still, an open, flapping
half-door just invites trouble. I went upstairs and to the bathroom, and
called Dag at work (told the lady at the front desk that yes, it was more
or less an emergency). What the hell was I going to do about the door?
Well, we decided I should try to fix it, maybe by covering up the hole
with wood. I went back down and managed to fit the destroyed piece back
onto the door. Hammered it together, the wood was rotten so it was a bit
of a mess. (That's why it broke in the first place!) Then I got some
bits of wood, 1x4 and 1x6, and some nails which we'd salvaged from the
basement, and hammered them across the wound, inside and out, so the
broken piece was more or less fit together like a puzzle, with pieces of
wood across it to keep it from breaking off again. All this in wind (50
km/h gusting to 90 km/h, blowing the door out of my hands) and more or
less pouring rain. Unfortunately, I also bent the hinges, so it doesn't
quite close as well as it used to. Now the only thing holding it shut is
the padlock. I'm afraid to force it into the frame because the wood is so
weak it might break again when I try and open it. (Actually, it's
possible that the door is now far sturdier than it used to be...) The
hasp is slightly bent but held up very well (which is why I couldn't get
out!) The repair job was greatly hampered by our lack of useful bits of
wood and nails.
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Just so you all know, I love fixing things, building things, designing things. I'm the one who took the sink apart when the drain was clogged, defrosted the frozen water pipes, emptied the eavestroughs, put up the Christmas lights, etc. I also love navigating, and maps. (Maybe because my mom let me navigate across Saskatchewan when I was about nine.) And you should have seen me hauling gear down to the boat every day during our field trip last summer! "Haul and stow, haul and stow, haul and haul and stow" because our motto.
