Check Your Doorknobs

We don't watch American Idol at our house......

Now, you don't believe me, right? LOL. Seriously, we don't watch it. We used to and that's how I know that they shout about going to Hollywood. BUT we have watched TV at our house with the sound muted for years. David and I read the closed captioning. If Jack is not making the noise, sudden loud noises can be upsetting for him so we have just adapted to watching TV this way. I have no idea why he started shouting, "Hollywood" when I started filming this video that was supposed to be Jack rapping. Maybe I can actually catch him some other time and get it on video for you. 

Now, that I have lured you in with the cuteness, let me hang my head in shame and heavily encourage you to check the locks on the doors in your home. More specifically, check that you are able to unlock every door in your home from the OUTSIDE. All of our interior upstairs doors have a twist lock on the inside and you can push a slender stick through the outside to get it unlocked. Until yesterday, I would have sworn to you that this was the case for every interior door in our home. 

Yesterday evening, Jack had a meltdown. He was just repeatedly shouting one word and lashing out with his arms and legs. I was able to catch and deflect his arms but he was making contact with his feet. Let me tell you, his legs are strong and I am no martyr or saint. I do not like to be hurt! I knew that I needed him to calm down but I had to calm down first to help him get there. As calmly as I could manage, I told him that his behavior was not safe and that we all needed to be safe. In an effort to make us safer, he was going to have to go sit alone where his arms and legs could not hurt anyone else. Since we were in the basement, I managed to escort him to the basement bathroom. Then, I locked the door. 

Jack can open the door locks to our interior and exterior doors. I really did not think anything of it other than it would slow him down a little if he tried to jump right back up and leave the bathroom. He didn't. He actually stood at the door shouting on the other side of it while I stood outside taking my own deep breaths and reminding myself that he was not in control of his behavior at the moment and my spanking or otherwise punishing him would not actually make anything better in the long term. 

It did not take long for me to reassure myself of my own beliefs and, by some miracle, Jack calmed himself down on the other side of that door. He started talking to me quite calmly and said, "Mama, open the door." I said, "Alright, buddy, unlock the door." He couldn't get the lock. I turned to Safety Dave and asked for one of the sticks we use to unlock the interior doors. He went and grabbed one only to find that the door did not unlock. 

Friends, let me take a quick detour and tell you that little Marie was locked in a closet more than once when she was small and one time accidentally locked herself in the bathroom in the dark at night with no window when she was very sick and very small. As a result, grown up Marie is claustrophobic, embarrassingly claustrophobic. 

Grown up claustrophobic Marie had locked her precious favorite person in the world in a bathroom with no window! Thank God the light was on.  Jack had not turned out the light like he sometimes does. My heart was pounding as I did my very best to remain calm and tell Jack to just "have a seat for a minute, Mama and Daddy are doing something". David unscrewed the door knob and pulled the exterior knob off. Jack pulled off the interior knob and said, "Help you, help you." wanting us to put the knob back on. This would have been funny if the door had opened but no! The lock was still engaged. Nothing would pry it loose. 

David ended up having to take the entire door apart. I don't even know what the door parts are called. He removed the molding from outside the door and we had to tell Jack to stand back while David tapped the door in. 

The whole event was probably less than 15 minutes but it felt like an eternity. 

We Googled and YouTubed and, apparently, these types of knobs require a skinny flathead object that you can put through the hole and twist in order to open the door. 

We survived 

but friends, take it from me, you want to make sure you know how to unlock all your keyless doors.