If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you are well
aware of my knack for getting myself involved in situations that inevitably
will make me want to go hide out in the woods somewhere until I can show my
face in public again without feeling embarrassed.
Well, I’m ashamed to admit that last week I think I managed
to create the Queen Mother of all embarrassing moments – which is why I
currently am writing this from my tent in the middle of the forest (just
kidding – I couldn’t handle the mosquitoes).
Anyway, speaking of annoying insects, that is how my morning
of embarrassment began. I had taken the dogs out for their usual walk, and when
I returned home, I noticed a parade of ants marching across the laundry-room
floor. I followed their trail to the point of origin and discovered that the pests
were coming up from the basement through a gap around the laundry sink’s
drainpipe.
Usually, I give the interior perimeter of the basement a few
squirts of ant killer every spring, but this year, the weather was so cold, I
forgot it was spring and thus, forgot to spray. So I decided to do it right
then, before the ants that already had made it into the house had the chance to signal down to
the rest of their buddies and invite them upstairs for a party.
“I should change my clothes first,” I said to myself. I was
wearing my “walking” clothes – my good jeans, good walking shoes and a
navy-blue hoodie – none of which I wanted to get bug killer on. But laziness
overtook me and I decided to venture down into the basement without changing
into my usual protective basement-attire – paint-covered sweat pants, my late
husband’s size XXX flannel shirt that comes down to my knees, and a baseball
cap to protect my head from anything that might decide to make a nest in my
hair. But I did opt to at least put on a face mask, to lessen my chances of
being overcome by bug-killer fumes.
First, however, I walked outside to the bulkhead. Last year,
I had a screen door installed over the bulkhead door so I could air out the
basement when it was damp…or if I needed to spray anything down there. That
way, I wouldn’t have to worry about vermin getting into the basement while I
was airing it out.
I unlocked the screen door, opened it from the outside,
opened the inner door, then closed the screen door again and locked it with my
key. That way, fresh air already would on its way down there when I started spraying. I shoved the key into my pocket and went back into the house before
heading down to the basement.
You may be wondering why I didn’t just go downstairs through
the bulkhead, seeing I already was out there, opening the door.
In a word…spiders.
In the stairway of that dark, narrow, creepy bulkhead live
more hideous species of spiders than I ever even knew existed. In fact, some of
the species have yet to even be identified by science. Considering that I suffer from a
severe case of arachnophobia, I wouldn’t set one toe on those bulkhead stairs
even if I were wearing a suit of armor...or there was a sack of $100 bills waiting for me at the top of them.
So, armed with my jug of bug killer and my face-mask, I ventured down into the basement through the door in the laundry room. Getting down
there, however, wasn’t an easy task because I had to outrun my two dogs and
slam the door before they were able to reach it. For some reason, they both
LOVE to go down to the basement. Eden likes it because there are boxes of old
toys down there from which she quickly can grab something and rip it to
shreds. And Wynter likes go down there because she enjoys…well, peeing on the
concrete.
As I was down there, spraying the corners with bug killer, I
could hear Wynter jumping up on the basement door and whining loudly. She
obviously wasn’t at all pleased I had given her the slip and left her upstairs.
As soon as I was finished with the odious task of spraying,
I ran up the stairs so I could get away from the toxic bug-killer fumes. I
also was eager to remove the face mask, which was beginning to make even my
teeth sweat. I grabbed the door handle and pushed on the door.
It didn’t open.
I tried again, and then again. Still, it didn’t open. I
thought Wynter might be lying up against it, but I could hear her wrestling
with Eden out in the kitchen.
I felt my heart begin to race as reality struck me –
Wynter’s jumping on the door must have locked it! The lock, only on the outside of the door, was this weird hinged type that
flipped over onto a little ball to lock it. Somehow, Wynter had managed to flip it! There
was no way to unlock it from the inside – which was the main reason why I’d
installed that particular lock in the first place – to
I’d like to say I calmly weighed my options, but unfortunately,
I would be lying. There was nothing calm about my reaction. I practically
screeched, “Oh, my God! My only way out
of here now is to climb out through the bulkhead! I can’t do it! I can't! I’m going
to die down here!”
It took me at least 20 minutes to gather the courage to even
approach the steps leading up through the bulkhead. I put up the hood on my
hoodie to protect my hair from becoming a spiders’ nest, and bolted up the
super-steep steps. The inner metal door at the top was the one I’d just opened
from outside, thank goodness, so all I had to do was open the screen door and
dash out into the yard…and freedom!
I grabbed the handle on the screen door, but it wouldn’t
move. I tugged it, I shoved it, I hit it with my fist – still, it remained frozen.
I couldn’t open the door no matter what I did. Not wanting to spend one more
second standing in the creepy bulkhead, I rushed back down into the basement, all the
while, envisioning a bunch of hairy spiders clinging to the back of my shirt.
That’s when panic
really set in. I was trapped! The two locked doors were my only way out. The small basement windows not only were up too
high for me to reach, a quick measurement of them with my eyes told me my butt
was doomed to get stuck in one of them even if I could climb up high
enough to attempt to squeeze through one.
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| THE DREADED BULKHEAD STAIRS |
I then thought about going back up to the screen door and shouting
through it for help. But considering the fact I live in the middle of nowhere
with no neighbors close by, I couldn’t imagine who would come to my rescue –
Grizzly Adams? And even if someone did come, how could he save me? I would have
to tell him where my spare house-key was hidden outside, and then he’d have to
unlock the front door, go in through the house…and end up having his pants ripped off
by my dogs.
I thought that if worse came to worse, I would just cut a hole in the screen door and climb
out through that. But I’d forgotten there were no tools in the basement, just
toys. The tools were out in the garage. I found myself frantically wondering if
the Luke Skywalker action figure in one of the basement boxes had a lightsaber that
actually could cut a hole in something.
At that point, I remembered I still had the screen-door key
in my pocket. I could see sunlight coming in from a gap underneath the door, so
I figured if I could squeeze the key out through that little gap, whoever was
on the other side of the door could then unlock it from outside and let me out,
without having to go into the house or end up with shredded pants.
I decided I had no
other choice at that point. I was going to have to go back up to the screen door
and shout through it for help. Then if someone showed up, I’d try to get the
key out to him (or her).
I checked my pocket to make sure the key still was in there,
and that’s when I discovered my cell phone!
I’d completely forgotten I’d taken it with me when I walked the dogs. If
I had changed my clothes, I wouldn’t have had either the key or the phone on
me, so I was grateful that my laziness had worked in my favor for once.
My first instinct was to dial 911, but then I decided a bad
case of arachnophobia probably didn’t qualify as an emergency - not unless a
gang of black widows viciously attacked me. I finally decided to call my
friends Paul and Nancy, who live 10 minutes away. I breathed a sigh of relief
when Paul answered.
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| ONE OF MY 'GUESTS' ON THE BULKHEAD DOOR HANDLE! |
“Paul! The dogs locked me in the basement!” I cried to him
in a rush of words. “I thought I could get out through the bulkhead, but I
can’t open the screen door! I have
tried and tried, but it won’t budge! Please, get me out of here! If the spiders don’t get me, the bug killer
I just sprayed down here will!’
“Well, on the plus side,” he said calmly,“the bug killer
probably will kill the spiders.” He chuckled before adding, “Hang in there –
I’ll be right over. You caught me just as I was about to get into the shower.”
Waiting for him was the longest 15 minutes of my life. It
would have taken only 10 minutes...if he hadn’t been naked when I called.
He arrived on the outside of the screen door and called my
name through it. I ran up the bulkhead steps and stood there on the inside.
“I’ll shove my key under the door so you can unlock the
screen door and get me out of here!’ I said to him as I bent to try to squeeze the key through.
“Um, Sally,” Paul said, once again very calmly, as he peered
at me through the screen. “See that
little button on the side of the door handle? That’s a lock. Flip it up and it
will unlock the screen door from your side.”
I hadn’t even noticed the button until he mentioned it. Sure
enough, I flipped it and like magic, the screen door suddenly was easy to
open. I, however, didn’t immediately rush outside as I had planned to do. I was
too embarrassed to face Paul. Even the spiders suddenly began to look more appealing to me.
The look Paul gave me when I finally did emerge from my dungeon told me he probably was
thinking I could win the “Dumbest Woman of the Week” award, hands down.
I’m still apologizing to him.
Even worse, after all of that trouble, the bug killer I used
had no effect whatsoever on the ants. It could be because it expired sometime
back during the Nixon administration.
I’m beginning to think that maybe living in a tent out in
the forest isn’t such a bad idea after all.
# # #
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