The other day, I got locked in to a bathroom stall at the rec center. The lock stuck (I should have been wary of this as it was hard to lock it in the first place), but I continued with reckless abandon to that toilet seat that I needed to use so badly. After finishing off my waterbottle in about an hour, I really needed to go. (This is my way of saying that, thank goodness, it was a number one.) 

After I finished, I tried to unlock the door with no luck. I used all of the strength of my hands, digging the flesh of my fingers into the metal. Nothing. I listened quietly. It seemed that everyone had left the rather large bathroom, save for the girl (I presumed) in the stall beside mine. She was just quietly hanging out in there. No dribble dribble. No plop plop. No breathing even, just a pair of tennis shoes under the stall. She was completely still, waiting in fawn-like terror, to be left alone.

I noticed that there was a gap under the door. Not something I wanted to crawl through, but it was just big enough if it came to that.

With little, to no room to maneuver in the tiny stall, I tried to get my leg in position for a Tae Bo kick. After a few weak attempts (there just wasn’t enough room to get any leverage), I waited and listened. The fawn next door continued her silent wait, sneakers planted.

I gave it one last kick. I didn’t even try to aim for the lock this time; I was just trying to kick down the mother-effing door.

No luck. The door and lock didn’t budge. Each attempt just shook the entire row of stalls. It seemed I would knock them all over before I would get my own door open.

"Is anybody there?" I said finally.

Silence.

"Hello?" I said, waving my hand at the fawn from underneath the stall to let her know that I knew that she was there.

"Uuuuuhhh(voice-crack-tear)mmmmmm," said the fawn to my hand.

"Hi," I said. "I’m locked in my stall, and there’s no way to get out. Could you maybe pull on the door while I kick it or something?" I heard the girl unlock her door and walk to the front of my stall. 

"I don’t know," she said, not out of skepticism, but more like that was the refrain of her life. I kicked again, but to no avail.

"I think I’m going to have to crawl underneath," I said.

Silence.

"I just wanted to let you know, so you didn’t freak out or something," I said.

"Oh," said the fawn. I crouched to the tiled floor and commenced to army crawl out from underneath the stall. I came up smiling like, ‘crazy, huh? Well, thanks for the help.’ On the other side, I met a stoic, petrified girl, frumpy clothes, greasy hair. The kind of girl who doesn’t shower because she’s uncomfortable with her own naked body due to years of sexual abuse.

We stood awkwardly. We should become friends, or something, I thought, but I was a little peeved that she wasn’t more helpful or fun about the whole debacle. Who did she think she was? I had just been trapped in a bathroom stall! The least she could do was MAKE LIGHT OF IT!!!

I wondered what she’d been doing in her stall. "Ok, well, that was gross," I finally said.

She nodded. "Yeah, I don’t know," she said shrugging.