Funny and Not So Funny All At the Same Time

Abby locked me in her room the other day. About a month ago, Abby locked herself in her room and it took about 10 minutes for Roy and I to get the doorknob unscrewed, ripped off the way-too-many layers of paint, and then push the lock in to actually open the door. Since the doorknob was off already, we swapped it and figured we had just saved her from locking herself in her room again. We didn't think about me. I went in to her room to grab a box, heard the door close, and the Abby started to cry. I went over to the door thinking that she was just mad that the door was closed. She's getting used to the idea of turning the handle to open the door, but our doors have so many layers of paint that they stick. I went to turn the handle and discovered it was locked. I quickly discovered that despite the amount of storage we have in Abby's room, we really don't have much that will unlock a door or unscrew a doorknob. I tried bobby pins, hair clips, pieces of the metal rod in her step-top garbage can, pieces of toy, stiff cards slid in the doorway, anything I could get my hands on. Oh yeah, and my handy cell phone wasn't in my pocket. To make matters worse, right before going into her room, I put grilled cheese sandwiches on the stove. They were more than crisp and the fire alarm was going off. The fire alarm happens to be located right outside Abby's door. So for the child who was already hysterically crying, the fire alarm was the icing on the cake. She sat down by the door and just tried to stick her fingers under so she could touch me. So sad! After evaluating whether or not I could make the 2-story jump from Abby's window to the rain-soaked grass, hoping the neighbors would hear the fire alarm and call maintainence to come resuce me, and trying to use the flimsy garbage can to break off the doorknob, I finally decided none of my ideas was going to work and just started pounding into the door with a hard piece of plastic. Luckily we have the mass-produced apartment doors and I was able to break a fist-sized hole in the door after about 5 minutes. The entire event was thirty minutes, but Abby is now more attached to Michelle and Michelle has a new fear of closing doors.