When the bathroom door is stuck, there are few options, and when removing the doorknob fails, the remaining option is bad news for the door.

It was past midnight and we had just finished in the newsroom when my housemate Justin Phillips came in the townhouse with a screwdriver and a very concerned look on his face.

The bathroom door is stuck, Justin exclaimed. He had alerted security, who sent him back to the complex with a screwdriver.

Students have often complained that doorknobs in the townhouses are stiff, sometimes getting stuck and leaving people  momentarily locked in the bathrooms.

That night, we were worried about how we’d get INTO the bathroom in the morning before work. Exasperated and facing an early morning in the newsroom, we sat outside the unyielding door weighing our options:

A)     Remove the screws from the knob and hope that somehow the door would magically open. If not, we could always force the door open.

B)      Climb through the bathroom window and risk breaking it-letting in species of insects I’ve probably never even seen before.  It’s termite season, and after seeing the supersized roach in our unit Sunday, option B was out. (The roach reminded me of the time I moved into Drew Hall at Howard University, and I thought it would be funny to call my mom and laugh at my luck on the first day here.)

C)      Do nothing and hope we could wash up in our neighbors’ townhouse, and pray maintenance would help later. That was off the table since everyone had to be up early, and we couldn’t risk entering the newsroom smelling like we never left it.

Security assured Justin that this happened all the time and that doors usually get broken because of it.

“Well, when in Rome,” I thought to myself.  After we agreed on sharing the worst luck in the world, we chose option A. When the entire knob had fallen through the door and it still wouldn’t open, “by any means necessary” rang in our ears.

After Justin forced the door open, we celebrated a problem solved.

The celebration ended when we saw what happened to the doorway.

When Justin looked, he considered taking his car for a night drive to clear his mind before bed. Since he did the work on the door while I snapped photos for evidence, I called Don Hecker to tell him what happened.

As the phone rang, another type of screwdriver suddenly came to mind. It faded when he said it was OK and could be handled in the morning.  Next, I overheard Justin telling someone about the doorway. He had called his mother too, but unlike my phone call, this one just didn’t seem as funny.

My first name is his last name, and we both have bad luck and call mom first when it hits the fan.

Whoever paired us in 3500 must have known something neither of us did until now.