Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana

Column: Stuck in the window

In my line of work, I've established a routine that makes it a lot easier to get the job done. Any little change will throw me out of my comfort zone and last week was a perfect example of this.

With the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, I had to change things up to get two weekly newspapers to the printer by Monday and it was a battle.

I knew my best bet would be to write as much as humanly possible on the Wednesday and Thursday before, but things don't always go as planned. Instead I was faced with a long list of stories on Friday and was not looking forward to spending the day at my desk starting at a screen until my eyes hurt.

Things started to turn sour the moment I arrived at the office and would not let up for several hours. Shortly after pulling into the parking lot, Melissa realized she had grabbed the wrong set of keys. We would not only not be able to get into the office, we would have to drive home to get the right set of keys. This opened up another can of worms considering the keys left in the house had the keys to the house. We would have to find another way in the house.

The easiest solution to this predicament would have been to have extra keys on the extra set, but in my life those things only happen after circumstances like the one we were facing.

There was a moment that we thought of going in through a window in the front of the house, but I didn't want to be climbing through in front of the many people who would pass by. I'm sure, and rightfully so, someone would have called the police and that would have been an inconvenience to try and explain why I was going through a window at 8:30 a.m.

Instead I went to the back yard and popped off a screen. The window was unlocked so I opened it and all I had to worry about was getting through. It would have been a much easier task to send one of the kids through, but they were at school so that was not an option.

I grabbed myself a make shift step stool and started to climb through the window and this is where things got interesting. I did not angle myself correctly and ended up stuck. I'm far from the skinny 20-year-old I once was and I was way too large to make a straight shot to rescue the keys. I was not only stuck, it hurt and I started acting like a five year old throwing a tantrum. It was such a tight squeeze I could no longer go backwards, my only hopes were to somehow maneuver myself in a manner that would get me through. At this point, my head was dangling and I started a stream of horrible words because the bed was about two feet away and I was not looking forward to landing head first on the floor. I somehow managed to grab the comforter on the bed and push the mattress to where it needed to be.

I then spent about the next three minutes trying to wiggle and at the same time thinking I'm about 10 minutes away from explaining to the police I'm stuck in a window at 8:45 a.m.

I'm not exactly sure what I did, but someone managed to make it through. The bad part was it was at such a force I slammed onto the bed and shot off onto the wood floor. I still managed to hit my head.

After finally getting to work an hour and a half later, I knew I needed to get going or I would have to spend most of my weekend working. During the morning shenanigans I had enough coffee to kill a small horse and had to use the bathroom. I went to use the one at the office and found it strange the door was shut. I went to turn the handle and it was locked. One of the kids had someone managed to lock it the day before. I've never had a key to the bathroom and if I did it would have probably been at the house.

I needed to work, and needed to use the bathroom, but would instead try to figure out how to get the door open.

I somehow managed to get into the bathroom after about 30 minutes.

It was an awful morning and certainly did not help getting the papers out in time, but I survived.

The next time I have to get the papers out on Monday I'm going to have so many extra sets of keys I'm about thirty pounds heavier. That combined with what I ate for Thanksgiving would never get me threw a window even without the added keys.

 

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