A brief public service announcement regarding bathroom safety.

    If you happen to live in an older house, as I do . . .

    And if your home has doors that tend to stick in the winter, as mine does . . .

    And if you like to take showers so hot that you use all the hot water and leave the room so steamed up that you can barely see a foot in front of your face . . .

    You might want to leave the bathroom door open when you shower in the winter, and just close the bedroom door instead.

    . . . because the heat and/or moisture from the boiling hot shower, when combined with a somewhat warped door and/or door frame, might lead to the potentially awkward situation of you becoming trapped in your bathroom, unable to open the door at all.  In fact you might end up spending several minutes trying repeatedly to yank the bathroom door open, followed by several more minutes of trying to slowly wiggle the door open.  And if you happen to be the only one home at the time, you might be faced with the question of whether you should call your spouse at work to come rescue you (if you are lucky enough that your cell phone is in the pocket of the pants you took off just before you got into the shower rather than being out in another room) or whether it would be better to just stay locked in the bathroom until the door finally shrinks enough for you to get it open.

    Of course if you panic enough at the thought of having to do either of those things, and you yank on the door even more violently while pulling backward with all your might, it might eventually fly open.  Of course when it does you should be very careful so that you don't fly back across the room and fall into the tub. 

     (ouch!)

    If all of that did somehow happen to you, and you decided to mention it to your spouse, they might respond by saying that you just have to pull down on the doorknob while pulling on the door in order to open the door after it has become stuck.  And in fact they might seem amused by the whole thing, which might just upset you a little bit which might cause you to start yelling and flailing your arms and threatening to saw the top of the door off and beat them with it.

    But I don't recommend that, because you might feel a little bit silly afterward.  Of course I don't necessarily speak from experience here or anything.  And if I did I wouldn't admit it.  But still, you might want to watch out for those doors that tend to stick.  I know I will from now on.