Locked in, hung up

OK, I know I haven’t been wow-ing the crowds with my scintillating posts here lately but sometimes life takes precedence over the old blog and this is where I find myself these days. This is somewhat of a hobby, after all, though I do feel the pressure to keep the masses (the few dozen handfuls of you, that is) happy by provoking, polemicizing, whingeing and talking about my bad haircuts, which is something I did once but that post – for whatever reason – is the crowd-pleaser of the bunch, topping out the greatest hits list in my Google Analytics. I should really find a way to capitalize on that maybe with a flashing Pantene (it's marketed in both countries though here it’s pronounced “Panten” not “Panteen”) banner up top.

Anyway, today I’m going to talk about something so ridiculous and insignificant in the scheme of my life that I can’t even believe I’m writing about it. But it must be addressed because it’s becoming a recurring theme – I keep getting locked in public bathrooms and I’m literally developing a phobia about it. In fact, it happened again today and I’m still shaking. I think I’ve figured out the problem. Italian doors are typically well-made of solid materials. My bathroom door at home growing up, for example, was so flimsy I probably could have beaten my way through it with the hairdryer. Not these Italian doors. I think so much goes into making these doors that they skimp on the lock capabilities. Or the door manufacturers are in cahoots with the locksmiths and this is all a large conspiracy.

Whatever the case, this gives me two options when going to the bathroom in public places (this can’t happen to me at home – my bathroom has a window and all I’d have to do is jump out on to the balcony). One, lock the door and spend my bathroom time living in fear of being trapped in all the while using one hand to continue to make sure my cell phone has coverage. Two, not lock the door and chance being walked in on. Italians – bless their hearts – don’t knock first. They just burst right in. At minimum, they will knock once loudly AS they are opening the door thus defeating the purpose of the courtesy knock. I’ve also developed a theory about this, and I believe it is due to the closeness of the Italian family and the typically close quarters in which they live. Nobody knocks and it’s all just “one big happy family.” This is how it is at Cristiano’s parents’ house and I’ve been both locked in their bathroom and walked in on countless times. I’ve been walked in on while renting an apartment in the mountains (yes, to my dismay, a virtual stranger saw me astride the bidet on my first confused attempt - do I face it as if I were riding a pony or put my back to it to allow the spray to reach all bits and parts? - at using the porcelain fixture), while staying with people at the sea, in crowded bars and restaurants. Name a place in Italy – it’s quite possible someone has caught a glimpse of me with my pants down there.

Why are so many locks faulty, you ask? I don’t really know. Italians are artisans. They are responsible for the manufacture of some of the most beautiful, handcrafted pieces in the world. One problem I see is that there seems to still be a heavy reliance on the skeleton key and the skeleton key, in my experience, can be a bit temperamental. Either you get it locked and then it won’t unlock. Or it falls out of the door and then you can’t get it back into the lock. Or – worst-case scenario – it falls out of the lock and under the door to the other side. Now that’s a nightmare, especially if there’s nobody on the other side of the door to hear you pounding (this is about the time I begin hyperventilating). Italian doors seem not to have that basic one-move flip lock that we have in the U.S. There’s always some complicated extra maneuver like pushing and holding down that throws a kink into things and either doesn’t allow you to lock at all or locks you in.

Let me explain why I am so traumatized by the whole lock thing. It all started when I was teaching English to a group of elite police cadets in an Italian police academy. One day, before catching the bus for a long bus ride home after class, I decided to hit the bathroom. The women’s bathroom was way down a very long corridor and when I got inside, I had to weave my way through a ridiculous number of anterooms to the way back in order to actually find a toilet. This was in my early days in Italy and before I got paranoid and began taking my cell phone to the toilet with me, so I left my bag on the sink (who steals in the police academy, right?) and locked myself into this windowless bunker of a tiny bathroom. Of course, I got locked in. For an hour. I didn’t panic at first because I thought, “Sooner or later, someone will come in the bathroom and get me out…” Then when I really began thinking about how many women I’d actually seen in and around the police academy and about who in the world would ever think to look for me down a maze of corridors in a forgotten women’s bathroom in that fortified concrete block of a building, full-on panic set in. I screamed at the top of my lungs and nobody came. I tried to undo the hinges of the massive door. Didn’t work. Finally, I was able to continue working on the lock to get the door open. But I am convinced to this day that if I’d never gotten the lock to work, my decomposed body would have been found in that bathroom about a decade later.

Sometimes when I leave the house, I tell Cristiano "If I don't come home, look for me in a bathroom or a jammed elevator somewhere." Yes, phobia has taken hold though it hasn't gotten to the point where I send SMS-es saying "I'm now entering the bathroom and I'm in via Roma, 17, third floor..." or "If I don't make it back from the bathroom, remember I always loved you..." But, believe me, after this most recent incident, I'm about this close.