Grandchildren Are Precious

In my home, as in most, there is a room at the top of the stairs that in other parts of the world is referred to as “the necessary” or sometimes as the water-closet. My wife liked to refer to this as my “hidey-hole,” which I thought grossly unfair, but it is true that I sometimes spend an inordinate amount of time in there, showering, shaving, combing my hair, brushing my beard, and progressing ever so slowly through whatever book(s) I have in there at a given time.
I had a visitation this past Thursday from my youngest daughter, who brought her three sons (ages 4, 6, and 8) to visit while she dropped off her old laptop, which she was loaning me until I could get mine fixed. While she and I enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate in the kitchen, the boys first ransacked the toy bucket in the front room and then started running around upstairs, making frightful noises as they ran and jumped and slammed doors and harassed one another. She and I determined to ignore that, and eventually they were called down to have their own hot chocolate and then to ride off into the day, while I turned to the heady business of learning how to use an old laptop. All was well until the next morning, when I rolled out of bed and went to the necessary – or, rather, went to the hallway door that normally opened onto the necessary but on this day was not opening, because it was locked from the inside. My immediate conclusion was that this was attributable to Jacob Riley, the middle of her three sons, as he had been prone to indulge in turning the knob on door locks ever since he learned to walk, but in all truth I have to admit that it might just as well have been Benjamin Anndrew, the youngest, who tends to imitate his brothers in every way possible. Jacob had locked the downstairs bathroom door in the past, and also had locked me out of the house on at least two occasions. In the case of the downstairs bathroom, its lock has a keyhole, and I could open it with a paper clip or the small blade on my pocket knife, as I had to do many times while my own children were growing up and had locked themselves in; in the case of the outside door, I had had to break through the lock on the bulkhead door in order to get into the house one time, while another time I was able to open a window and crawl in.
I leaned over to look, confirming that there was no keyhole to pick, and then I fetched my pocket knife and a credit card to see if I could push back the latch as all the detectives do in the mystery novels I read. It turned out I have no such talent. I then got a larger sheet of stiff plastic, a butcher knife, and eventually a long strip of thin metal that had been removed from a bed spring long ago – all without success. The only way out (or in, in this case) appeared to be to smash a hole through the door, which would then have to be replaced, but I determined to wait a bit, thinking I might enlist the aid of a friend on the other side of the valley, who is a retired mechanical engineer and had a remarked talent for fixing things, and I went off to the gym to take a shower and to indulge in the make-busy things that make up my day.
I mentioned my predicament to my youngest when she phoned, and she asked if there were a little hole in the doorknob; I told her there was not.
One of the things for that day was a visit to the Community Development Department at Town Hall, where I had to look at some papers for upcoming Zoning Board of Adjustment cases, and I happened to mention my plight to the new Assistant Town Administrator, a former officer in the Salem Police Department, who asked if there were a little hole in the front of the doorknob, and I informed him there was not, as this was an old door. He suggested that I talk to the Fire Department about borrowing their door spreader. I had never heard of this device, but it seems that most fire departments have such a mechanism, which spreads the door frame sufficient to allow access to a lock, so that they can get through locked doors quickly, either to rescue people or to simply get access into locked areas. He acknowledged that using this tool sometimes cracks the adjoining wall, but my thinking was that, in the event that calamity happened, I could coerce the grandsons’ father into patching the wall, which is something he does rather well.
This condition continued through that day and night, and I found myself on Saturday morning at the Town Meeting Deliberative Session, where I was recording the minutes for the Town Clerk … and, it turned out, sitting directly across the aisle from the Fire Chief. I approached him during the intermission and made my problem known, asking how I could get ahold of that device to see if it would resolve my problem. I mean, I could keep showering at the gym, and even shaving there, but eventually JoanEllen would come down for a visit, and the door had to be open by then! Chief Murray was all pleasantness, clearly thinking my problem was a big joke; he asked if there were a little hole in the doorknob, and I assured him there was not. He then said he would speak to the on-duty captain after the meeting, and he suggested that I wait an hour or so and then call the Fire Station and ask for help.
I did that, and the captain told me he would be there in a few minutes (which meant, of course, that I had to dash about the house and do a little picking up). Sure enough, in much less than a quarter of an hour a fire truck was parked in front of the house (because my cars fill the bottom of the driveway, which was so icy that my vehicles could not get up the hill). I opened the kitchen door, to find not just the captain, but also three brawny firefighters, all dressed up in fire-fighting gear, and we all paraded through the kitchen and dining room and then up the stairs to the second floor. As the captain reached the top of the stairs, he proclaimed, “I could open this with a clothes hanger,” but he took out a credit card from his wallet. I told him I had already tried that, without success, and he informed me that he was pretty good at it … and he then stuck the card into the crack between the knob and the doorframe and opened the door, as fast as I could have opened it before it was locked!
I was appreciative, but embarrassed, and he then made it worse by pointing to the doorknob and saying, “See that little hole in the middle? You can just push the end of a clothes hanger in there and release the lock.” I bent over and looked again, and my eye apparently was working better than it had been Friday morning, because sure enough, there was a 3/16” hole in the middle of the doorknob!

Am I the only person in the world who did not know about this fail-safe lock-release in bathroom doors?