Dear Notre Dame Class of '98 Class Secretary Bob Flannery,
So I was leaving my apartment building on Wednesday with the BF (a.k.a. NY Post Guy ... yes, Bob Flannery, we survived the whole "date with another woman featured in the 11th most widely circulated newspaper in the country" thing ... it was actually pretty hilarious) ... but yes. Gentleman that he is, he opened the front door of the building for me, and the door knob came off in his hand. Now don't get me wrong Bob Flannery, I don't for one second think that he broke it. I'm sure it was broken well before he laid hands on it, but this was the first time we noticed it.
So for the last bunch of days, every time I've opened the door, the door knob has come off in my hands, and every time, I've screwed it back on and then kind of finessed my way out the door. Not an ideal situation by any means, but it worked, you know what I mean Bob Flannery? But then I got home tonight. I was kind of shot from a long day at work and an even longer run in the park, and I wasn't really paying attention, so it wasn't till after the door closed completely that I noticed that the door knob was *gone*. Like, nowhere to be found.
Huh.
So I'm standing there in the vestibule of my building wondering if I'm going to be able to get the door back open. There's just this thin naked bolt sticking straight out at me. Not much to grab on to. (No, there's no sexual innuendo intended there. Get your mind out of the gutter Bob Flannery!) So I grab the bolt between my thumb and index finger and attempt to turn it, but yeah, it's not turning and the door's not going anywhere.
This is an unusual problem. Makes the whole bathroom ceiling mold situation seem like small potatoes. I start thinking about fires. Wouldn't it be ironic if a fire started in a location such that it blocked access to the fire escape but left the front door perfectly clear, only we couldn't get out because someone took the door knob?? Ugh! So would you believe I own a pair of plyers? Or is it "pliers"? I don't even know how to spell it, but I own it. I head up to my apartment, grab the plyers/pliers, go back down to the vestiblue and wrap 'em around the bolt, turn, and voila. The door is open. Good to know that at least we're not totally stuck in this place!
(In case you're wondering Bob Flannery, I then threw the deadbolt so the door couldn't close all the way. And I left a snarky note. I didn't mean for it to sound snarky, but it's hard not to sound snarky when you're asking people to do something that will enable you to leave your apartment building without having to bust out the toolbox.)
But what's especially funny about this is that this is not the first time we've gotten stuck in our building. We once actually got stuck in our apartment. The knob of our deadbolt came off in my roommate's hand one morning when she was leaving our apartment to go to work. Or trying to leave, I guess, because the deadbolt didn't go anywhere. You always know you're in trouble when you wake up to your roommate coming into your bedroom and saying, "Siobhanny??" in that high pitched voice that all my friends reserve only for times when we're in trouble. When I lived with The Rones, this noise always meant we'd overslept our morning dining hall duty. (Did you ever work in the dining hall Bob Flannery?? Pretty gross stuff, lemme tell you. I had what I believe was called the "back shift," cleaning food that people left on their trays into that little trough thing. Ah, memories.)
At any rate, yeah. We're locked in our apartment. And this is our own damn fault, but we didn't have our landlord's phone number. My roommate almost had to go out the fire escape to try to find the guy, but we decided first we'd call every D******* in the phone book. We didn't find our landlord, but we found someone who was related to him. My roommate was the one who got through to this guy, and the part of the conversation that I heard was *awesome*. "We're stuck in our apartment." "Yes." "The lock broke." "Yes." "We can't get out." ... "Yes." "We're stuck in our apartment."
Now, my landlord is this 80 bazillion year old guy from the Ukraine. He's like the guy from that Seinfeld episode. "I am from Ukraine. You not say Ukraine is weak." So clearly the only way to resolve this situation is to hack through the door with a screwdriver. Yes Bob Flannery, you read that right. All these Domers who write to you every quarter to tell you about their fabulous medical and legal educations, or their blessed nuptials to classmates, or their beautiful bouncing future Domers ... all those people would probably have called a locksmith. But for once just once people, let's use our brawn instead of our brain. Who needs a locksmith when you can just hack through the door with a sharp metal object? Put a little elbow in it. Work out some of that pent up aggression.
So this was like something out of a horror movie, this guy just pounding through the door, wood flying everywhere, metal bending ... Half the door was missing by the time he was done. But you know what, he got the job done, and my roommate got to work a lot earlier than she would have gotten there if we'd had to sit around waiting for a locksmith to get there. This all occurred back in the glory days when my work didn't give a crap when I showed up, so it didn't really matter to me one way or the other, but Chris likes to get to work on time. She's good like that.
So yeah, huh, Bob Flannery. There you were thinking the impending collapse of my bathroom ceiling was big stuff. Little did you know the full extent of the high end class that we've got going on in our little outer-borough, walk-up chalet.
Oh well, I've got to go. But one question for you, since we're really talking here, just you and me Bob Flannery. Did you know when you ran for Class Secretary that you'd be indentured to a lifetime of reporting on our classmates' lives not once, not twice, not thrice, but *fice* (is there a more entertaining word for "four" that I'm not thinking of??) annually? Always wondered that. Because if you didn't know ... oof. That had to be a lousy memo to receive!
Alright. Enough from me. 'Tis late, and I's tired. Till next time!
Toodles!
Siobhan
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