Trapped

An aspect of animal life that doesn’t relate to human life in any regard is the fear of death through being trapped. When I was child I opened a black plastic bin at the bottom of the garden to find three frogs in various stages of starvation next to a sludge of dead frogs and frog skeletons. The horror they had endured was largely due to their own stupidity. There is one basic rule that they could have followed to have avoided death. Namely, don’t go anywhere you can’t get out of. Now unfortunately today due to a lapse of concentration I had neglected this very basic rule to embarrassing consequences.

I had worked late for reasons that are too boring to go into, meaning that no one was left in the office when I left. Now I work in an old building that is just about big enough to get lost in if you don’t know what you are doing. I usually leave via the front entrance through a set of double doors. The inner door is always open due to a broken buzzer system that is activated by the receptionist to let you in. Today it was fixed. On passing through the door on my way home I noticed that the heavy outer door had been locked with a key I didn’t have. At the exact time I spotted this I head the click of the door behind me. On pressing the now working door buzzer I saw the light activate by the now empty receptionist’s chair. Fair play the electrician had done his job. The system now worked perfectly.

I found myself in a situation that wasn’t dangerous; the worst that would happen is that I would be trapped for about 13 hours. Is that enough justification to pick up the small table that resides in that space and smash my way through the shatter proof glass (you know the stuff with the little wire squares in it) to freedom leaving the office reception in disarray? No it isn’t. This meant that the only option left was the more embarrassing one of calling for help. Cries for help when danger is involved is perfectly acceptable. When you have trapped yourself in a 4 foot glass room it is embarrassing. I decided quite quickly that shouting “help!” was not an option as it sounded too alarmist. I would have rather stayed in there all night have been caught shouting that. The cry I went with was “hello!” and occasionally “is there anyone there?!”. Far more dignified I think you will agree.

I was in there about ten minutes when I realised that I could not be heard. One option was to stick my fingers through the letter box and cry for help at passersby on the street outside in the hope that they would come to my aid. I don’t know what they would do exactly, probably phone someone. Phone someone? I have a phone! I then rang a colleague who later said that when I spoke to her I sounded “really scared”. She then got someone who was still in the building to let me out. Pete Allen will live to fight another day.

If only those frogs at the bottom of the bin had used mobiles to phone me to let them out of the bottom of the bin then they would have avoided the horrors of starvation and death. I was lucky in the fact that I didn’t have to endure the decomposing bodies of workmates who had been trapped previously. Unlike the frogs however I probably wouldn’t have tried to have sex with them.

Pete