I have always thought my life to be quite the adventure, but every now and then, something happens that really goes above and beyond the ordinary. The following is such a tale . . .

Kellie Matthews and the Locked Door:
A Short Story

I was trapped.

Staring at the wooden grain of the door barring my exit, my mind grasped for a logical explanation as to why the doorknob was not functioning. Perhaps it was just stuck in the door jam? I twisted the doorknob again.

Panic sparked.

My mind grasped for sanity. The door can’t be locked, I thought. Again, I jiggled the doorknob. As panic clawed its way into my heart, my restraint broke. War broke out as I pulled, twisted, and pushed the doorknob as furiously as I could over and over again, all while the door stood its ground without budging an inch. I stopped, dumbfounded.

I was definitely trapped.

With reality settling in, I realized three things:

Firstly, that the current time was well after school hours, thus leaving my current location in the school mostly devoid of humanity.

Secondly, that my phone had run out of calling and texting minutes four hours earlier.

And thirdly, that I, Kellie Matthews, was irrevocably locked inside a girl’s bathroom on the second floor of my school with no clear means of escaping before morning.

With that third realization in mind, I did the only thing a sane, dignified American girl of twenty-five years could possibly do: I yelled for help and attacked the door.

For twenty minutes I stood at the door in that small bathroom banging and kicking as hard and as loud as I possibly could, yelling for help whenever I thought I heard a voice or distant footstep. I prayed for God to send help, to have someone call me, to notice that I was missing in action. I kept looking to my phone in desperate hope, but nothing came through. My cracked voice, sore throat, raw knuckles, red palms, and throbbing toes testified to a valiant effort, but defeat was evident.

With one final kick, my head fell forward with a thump against the door and rested there as the silence of the school settled upon me. I thought of the long night to come in which I would surely spend my evening with naught but the commodes to keep me company. Standing there in such a pitiful way, I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Honestly, who else but me could manage to lock herself in a bathroom in a Russian school at 6:00 in the evening?

I heaved a great sigh and closed my eyes. One last try? I asked myself.

The response surprised me: Try turning the knob the other direction.

I opened my eyes and looked at the doorknob in confusion, as if it had spoken and planted the idea in my mind. With nothing left to lose, I grabbed the doorknob one last time and turned it the opposite direction.

Click.

Fresh air wafted over me as the bathroom door silently swung open. Feeling like Lucy stepping out of the Wardrobe into Narnia, I moved into the hall in bemusement, shocked at my sudden release from captivity.

A wild laugh bubbled to the surface, tugging the corners of my lips into a broad, quirky smile that could not be swallowed. Twenty minutes of yelling and pounding, and all I had needed to do to escape my prison of tile and porcelain was turn the knob to the left.

As I giddily hurried away from the bathroom and down the stairs to the coatroom, my mind turned to God in prayer: Thank you, Lord, for not sending help when I asked! If You had, I really don’t know how I would have explained this!