This weekend as the girlfriend and I were doing our laundry we got locked out of our apartment. It was just one of those things, running back and forth to and from the basement to change loads, sometimes it just happens.

What did we do? The management office was closed because it was the weekend, and the landlord wasn’t answering her cell phone¹. So we stood outside our locked door and shot back and forth ideas. I grabbed a piece if thin cardboard from the trash in the hall and attempted to jimmy open the door, with no luck. Then I remembered, we have a ventilation shaft² that goes from the bottom to the top of the building used for venting steam from the bathrooms of each apartment³. I figured I could just shimmy down it and break into our bathroom window.

Ashley⁴ was against the idea, she was very certain that I was going to hurt myself. I mustered as much machismo as I could by shooting back a drawn out “naaaa.” So I went to the roof and stared down the shaft weighing my options. Thankfully she requested we see if our upstairs neighbor was home so I wouldn’t fall as far.

It turns out our upstairs neighbor was home, so we pleaded and begged for him to let me crawl through his bathroom window and shimmy down to ours. He was reluctant but let me. As I was about to do it, he said, "I hope you've had your Splinter Cell training" and I responded, "Just call me Sam Fisher"

Attempting to stay in the macho mindset I kicked off my sandals and squeezed through the tiny window feet first. I pressed my back against one wall and feet against the other and walked my way down to our floor. I used our neighbor’s handy super-tool thing to pry off our screen and climb through.

I got through this unscathed and felt like a bad ass for a day.


¹Of course.

²See inset for a view looking up from our window

³Keep in mind that this building is 100 years old.

⁴The girlfriend