Sunday, February 28, 2010

Rescue 911

Tonight was a fascinating night.  After a delightful dinner, Mike thought it would be good to play with Farrah for a little bit before he had to return to work in his office.  It was a hilarious hide-and-seek adventure for the two of them and I was the spectator.  Mike always has special places to hide so that children NEVER find him.  If it were a sport allowed in the summer Olympics, he would be a Gold Medal contender.  He has managed to hide so well, that even I couldn't find him!

So, tonight, Farrah got to experience the professional hide-and-seeker at his absolute best!  I had Farrah wait in the bathroom while Mike hid.  When he was all settled in, she was on the move.  She looked and looked and Mike would yell, "FARRAH!!!" real loud and scare the crap out of her, making her scream at the top of her lungs, which of course, made me laugh my ass off.  This went on for a good 5 minutes (which is about an hour in toddler years) so Mike decided to come out.  But he didn't.

The hiding place in which Mike chose, has been his staple hiding spot since we bought the house 8 years ago.  It has never failed.  I've hidden in there once, and vowed never to do it again.  Mike's best hiding spot is our kitchen pantry.  It's about the size of a coat closet, but has shelves upon shelves of food, various grocery bags, and a big box of Farrah's play dough.  It's such a tight squeeze in there, I have seen the door bend from him breathing.  His body is always pushed right up against the racks and the door.

This is where the excitement came in.  The door didn't open.  Wouldn't open.  Couldn't open.  I thought for sure he was screwing around to make me panic, but no.  I kept thinking he was just being stupid and twisting the knob the same time as me so the door couldn't unlatch.  No.  The mother effin' door knob was broken.  BROKEN!!!  I have horrible claustrophobia, so I felt like I was going to have a panic attack for the both of us.  I watched as Mike pushed the door while bracing his body against the racks making room for some air.  I thought for sure, one more push and the door would've broken right off.

I asked if I could bust off the hinges and he told me to try and do it.  I ran to the garage and grabbed a hammer and a screw driver and ran back in.  The whole time this is going on, Farrah thought the game was continuing.  So she kept playing while I started banging away at the hinges.  Got the top one off, the middle one off, and then was stuck with the bottom one.  It took another 5+ minutes of banging the shit out of that hinge without breaking my thumb when it finally released.  We pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled.  I got up on a chair to see if there was something I could do with the top of the door.  When I was there, the door popped off and I grabbed it.  There, in the awful and muggy pantry squeezed in with the Raisin Bran and the Cheezits, was my dear husband looking at me with "are you effin' kidding me?" eyes.  We were both out of breath, him more than me.  The pantry was a mess, the door was a mess, the floor was a mess with greasy tools, and we thought, "what are the odds of this happening?"

The whole time this was going on, I asked a few times if he needed me to call 911.  I couldn't even imagine... only, I could.  Most of the people from the fire department are members at our gyms.  How embarrassing that would've been to have people that work out in our gym come to the rescue of my husband that was locked up in our kitchen pantry from an innocent game of hide-and-go-seek.  That game may be banned from our house now.  We had no idea how dangerous counting to 10 could be!