Locked

This is just a short story of a small adventure I had in India. Ever been locked in somewhere? Then perhaps you can relate.

One day, not so long ago, there were two young girls, along with their friends, attending a conference in the far northern state of Sikkim, India. Now the conditions in India are not always the best. But the Americans, for indeed, the two girls and their friends where from America, were honored in many ways by the locals. They were given special seats and badges that let them go most anywhere at the conference, including nice clean bathrooms (or washroom as they say in India) instead of the dirty holes dug under rickety structures. Now of course the girls and their friends made use of the washrooms many times, but one particular evening something unusual happened to them.

It was just the two girls. One using the toilet, the other putting on warmer clothes; it got quite cold in the evening. The one changing wasn’t thinking of anything important. Just that the stall was nice and large, it was nice that there was a hook on the door, and wouldn’t it be funny if they got locked in the bathroom. Now this last thought must seem odd to most people, as getting locked in anywhere is never thought of as pleasant. But in fact, she thought many funny things like this; thought nothing like them usually happened.

After the girls had finished in the stalls, they quietly were putting hand sanitizer on (they had nice sinks and soap to use, but no towels, so their hands would stay wet and cold if they used them; so they just used hand sanitizer which dried quicker), when suddenly the door, which they had only opened a crack, (because who likes having the door wide open when you use the bathroom, even if there is stalls?) closed the rest of the way and locked. The girls froze for a moment, then looked at each other.

“Did we just get locked in the bathroom?” one of the girls asked, eyes wide.

“Yep,” was the short reply from the other.

The first girl went over to the door and banged on it in hopes that who ever had locked it was still near by. After a few hellos and more rattling of the door, when the was no reply she turned back to her friend. All at once they started laughing. Not hysterical laughter where you drop on the floor, but the disbelief kind of laughing. After a moment the one girl admitted to having thought about this very thing happening to them, though she hadn’t thought it actually would!

Their time in the washroom was then divided by laughing at their predicament, trying to get the attention of someone on the other side of the door, and sending up short fervent prayers for another one of the young ladies from their group to need the washroom, and right quick at that!

It only took ten minutes at the longest before the man who had accidentally locked them in came along to let someone else in. As the key rattled in the lock the two girls gathered eagerly by the door, praising the God above who was kind enough to fill someone’s bladder on such short notice.

The two on the outside of the door were quite shocked to see the two girls on the inside of the door, gazing out with relieved looks on their faces. The poor Indian man was very sorry as he kept apologizing in his broken English, to which the girls kept assuring him that it was “quite alright.”

The girls continued to laugh all the way to their seats and decided that their ten minute adventure in the bathroom would be long remembered and often laughed at. And to be sure, from then on the door would be opened much farther than a crack.