Locked in a Public John

Here’s some karma for ya; just when you get through making fun of your local paper's Police Blotter you end up ON it.I’d been amusing myself with what passes for criminality here in Tinytown. (Somebody winged a cigarette butt out his car window, somebody got pinched for texting behind the wheel, somebody broke into at childcare center, played on the ride-on toys and ate all the ice cream etc.) but now I’LL be the in the paper too, shame of shames, just because I got locked in the bathroom of my favorite coffee shop.I knocked faintly on the thick steel door once I realized it really wouldn’t open.“Yo! Lady stuck in the can!” shouted the man at the table closest to the unisex bathroom.The manager arrived on the door’s opposite side. Then the police."Couldn’t we just cut through the sheet-rock?” I heard somebody say.By the time the fire trucks arrived I was super-hungry and wondering if they could maybe slide a really flat cookie or two under the big heavy door.Also, my feet hurt but the only seat was that prison-cell-style toilet.Meanwhile the consulting went on outside.“Ma’am! Are you all right ma’am?” the manager kept asking, maybe because I was preserving a dignified silence.Also because I was also busy trying to text the family member who might be likeliest to see a text.Also because I was trying to figure out if you could actually eat tampons.But after an unknown interval they finally succeeded in busting me out.“The cops wanted to shoot the lock but we wouldn’t let them!” the firefighters crowed. They were tickled  that they'd been the ones to solve the problem.The manager was tickled that they hadn’t had to introduce her walls to the Jaws of Life.But the most tickled people of all  I think were my own family members, some of whom confessed to guffawing loudly on hearing of my predicament that it caused heads to turn all over the office - and what can I say to that but GLAD TO BE SO ENTERTAINING!