Trapped in a stairwell

Most of the time, when someone finds themselves trapped somewhere, that "somewhere" will either be in traffic before work, in a shower as the result of unknowingly not having a towel to wear on the way to their room, or a bad date that results in some really awkward moments. In my situation, I happened to find myself trapped in a stairwell.

I'm not going to pretend as if I remember the exact date, but this took place 3 years ago during my last year of college. I had just gotten done with one of my classes and was getting ready to head out of the building. In this particular building, there are 9 floors and I happened to be on the 4 floor. Usually when I would leave this building, I would either take 1 of the 4 elevators (like the majority of people would do), or I would take the east stairwell if I was feeling a little more claustrophobic that day. This particular day, I decided to take the west stairwell. The reason why I decided to take the west stairwell is because of a combination of me just recently noticing this stairwell for the first time ever the day before and me being a naturally curious person. The reason why I (and probably a lot of other people too) hadn't ever noticed the west stairwell before was because the entrance for it was in an area of the floor where there are no classes at, and it is somewhat hidden as a result of the surrounding wall that protrudes in front of it. The only reason why I had noticed it the day before was because I happened to be doing my homework at a desk that was down the hallway from it, and I got up and walked over to the area of the stairwell entrance in order to get a glimpse of what was over there.

So after leaving class and entering into the 4th floor entrance of the west stairwell for the first time, I headed down the steps with no idea as to what was about to happen. I finally arrived to the first floor, pushed the exit door in order to go outside, and, to my surprise, the door was locked. I thought to myself, "Hmmmm..... that's weird. The first floor exit door in the east stairwell is never locked." So I pushed again, this time a little harder, and it still wouldn't budge. At this point, I decided that I would stop messing around with this door and just go up to the 2nd floor, go through the entrance door and take either the elevator or the east stairwell. Once I arrived to the 2nd floor entrance door, the same thing happened. The door was locked. I tried the same thing with the 3rd floor, 4th floor, and even the 5th floor, and continued to get the same result. Needless to say, this was a pretty frustrating experience. To make matters even worse, my breathing condition was doing a number on me.

Back then (and still to this day), I have what is called "severe respiratory allergies," which is very similar to asthma. As I was walking what felt like a marathon up all of these steps, my chest began to increase in tightness, my breathing became more and more shallow, and my stamina was beginning to significantly drop similar to how it felt my body was going to literally drop very soon. I had just got out of class, so I was carrying around my book bag that was always stacked to the max and weighed what felt like the equivalent of a gunny sack of potatoes. On top of this, I unfortunately had an empty water bottle that I usually try to make a point of keeping filled up, and I accidentally forgot my inhaler in the car. This was a horrible experience and I knew that I would never try to exit through this stairwell again.

After not being able to exit through that 5th floor entrance door, I decided to sit down for a couple of minutes in order to catch my breath and figure out what I was going to do next. I suddenly thought to myself, "There's a front desk receptionist for this building on one of the floors. I should give them a call." So I proceeded to search them on Google (I didn't have their number in my phone) and notified them of what was going on. The lady who I spoke with was barely any help at all. I don't remember word-for-word how the conversation went, but what I do remember is her saying that she would call some other department on campus so that they could help me out. All she had to do was go open the door or send someone else on their floor to open the door for me, and this problem would have been instantly solved. So while waiting for that other department on campus to give me a call in order to come help me, I, for whatever reason, decided that I would take one more trip down to the first floor exit door to give it another try. Once I arrived down there, I got the same result as before, but the thing that was different this time was that I noticed another door down there that was somewhat hidden, much like how the 4th floor entrance door was somewhat hidden when looking from the hallway view. This other door was behind a protruding cement wall also. I think the fact that the east stairwell didn't have a second 1st floor exit door that was also somewhat hidden behind a protruding cement wall was what made me not look the first time that I had arrived to the 1st floor. Like I said though, for whatever reason, I happened to look behind this wall and I ended up finding what turned out to be the only unlocked door in the whole stairwell. At this moment, I finally was able to leave the building and this crazy stairwell, and could not be happier. About 10 minutes later, I finally received a call from the department of campus that was going to help me out, and I just let them know that I had made it out.

Being the positive person that I am, I try to see the bright side of things. In this situation, I guess that bright side would be that I finally found out what that wise man meant by the phrase "curiosity killed the cat."