Survival 101: When Entering Through One Door, Make Sure You Can Get Back Out. Literally.

Otherwise, you may find yourself stuck in a 5’x10′ windowless room between a parking garage and a bolted “Exit” door with a weak cell phone signal, like I did Friday evening.

Did I panic?  Um, yeah.

Friday evening my parents asked if they could borrow Little Man for the night.  I had absolutely no problem with that and Andy and I jumped at the opportunity for a date night.

Hubby works in NYC and I had the bright idea to drop Little Man off around five pm and then drive into the city, normally a one hour drive.  Two solid hours later, I finally made it to Union Square in NYC, found a parking garage and parked.  Just in time for the storm that had been approaching the entire commute to hit (a few minutes before I pulled into the garage).

It was one of those basement-like garages with a steep winding ramp down into it.  It was also valet style, where you hand off your keys, tell them when you’ll be back, and they park the car for you.  I started to walk away from the car and look for an exit other than the crazy steep ramp that I was sure I wasn’t expected to walk up in my heels.  I found one door with an unlit exit sign that was pretty ghetto looking and locked.  On the other side of the garage, on the opposite side, next to the ramp and caddy corner from the attendant station there was a door that looked much more official.

This door had a bar handle that you pressed to get through and a brightly lit exit sign.  I walked through and there was a small hallway to another door.  When I got to the other door, it wouldn’t open and I could tell there was a lock on the outside.  That’s when I turned around and started to panic.  The other side of the door I came in, did not have a handle on that side.  I was stuck and the attendant station could not have been further away and he had barely noticed when I pulled up in the first place.

I got a running start and tried to open the bolted door one ore time, just to be sure.  Nothing.  I tried to call Andy and he could barely hear me and the call dropped.  That’s when I started pounding on the inside door (the one that led back into the garage) with my garage and screaming.  After probably two minutes, which felt like an eternity, the attendant found me.

What did he say to me?  “You scared me to death!  That’s not the way out, you have to walk up the ramp.”

No sh… Sherlock and good!  That was kind of the point.

I didn’t say that, though.  I just said “Sorry, I was pretty terrified.”  To which he responded, “You could have called the number on the ticket.”  At that point I just wanted to get out of there and was a little to shaken up to get into the cell phone signal thing, so I just said, “Maybe I would have thought of that eventually” and walked away to call Andy so he wouldn’t be freaking out.

The night following all that was amazing.  But just thought I would relay the valuable lesson I learned: never let a door close behind you without making sure you can get back out.

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