How I Became That Person At The Pub

There are certain moments in life when you know, deep in your bones, that you have made a lasting impression — the kind that will be retold at family gatherings you are not invited to.
 Last weekend, I became one of those moments.

It started innocently enough: a busy Saturday night at the pub. The place was buzzing, full of clinking glasses, bad karaoke, sticky carpets, and the general noise of a hundred conversations happening at once. I was a few pints deep — not wrecked, just nicely in that overconfident, slightly bulletproof stage of tipsiness where everything seems like a good idea.

And then, inevitably, nature called.

Being the sort of person who can't just quietly slip away, I decided, for reasons that still escape me, to announce my intentions to the entire table.
"I need the loo!" I declared to Mel, as if I were off to slay a dragon or embark on a once-in-a-lifetime expedition.

I stood up, chest out, and made my way through the crowd, feeling weirdly proud of myself for simply existing. I bobbed and weaved between people with the misplaced confidence of a man who thinks he’s the smoothest person alive.

I located the door to the toilets, the one tucked away slightly awkwardly behind the fruit machine and next to a suspiciously sticky-looking jukebox.
First door: no problem.
Second door: slight problem.

It moved, but didn’t open.
Not properly, anyway. It shifted just enough to suggest that it should open, but then stubbornly stopped, like a car door stuck on a seatbelt.

Now, a normal, sober human might have paused, assessed, maybe peeked around the door. They might have even asked themselves a few crucial questions, like, "Why is this door stuck?" or "Should I maybe not throw my entire body weight at it?”

But not me. No, no.
 The logical part of my brain was on a break.
The pint-fuelled part simply thought "Ah, jammed door. Shove harder".

And so I did.

With the confidence of a man who once assembled IKEA furniture without reading the instructions and lived to tell the tale I gave that door a proper, hefty, full-body shove.

It burst open with a crack like a gunshot.
And immediately, I knew I had made a mistake.

Behind the door stood a man, mid-stare at the floor.
 Behind the man, flat on the floor like a tiny, bewildered starfish, was his young son, no older than three or four, who had apparently been directly in the blast zone of my heroic door charge.

There was a horrible, stomach-sinking moment where everyone froze: me, the man, the child, even the fruit machine seemed to stop blinking.
I stared in horror.
He stared at me.
The child whimpered.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Just a sort of strangled sound that might have been "I'm so sorry" or might have been the sound of my soul trying to flee my body.

The father bent down to pick up his son, who, thank God, seemed mostly shocked rather than properly hurt. Meanwhile, I stood there, completely useless, hands half-raised like I was surrendering to the universe.

"I... I didn’t... I’m so sorry... I didn’t see... I didn’t know..." I babbled, my apology coming out in wild, incoherent bursts, as if more words might somehow fix the catastrophic series of choices that had led me to this moment.

The man just looked at me with the exhausted eyes of someone who had seen enough of humanity for one night.
He nodded, once, curtly, and walked away carrying his son — who was now clinging to him like a tiny, betrayed koala.

I, meanwhile, had to do the walk of shame into the toilets, where I seriously considered climbing out of a tiny window and starting a new life in a different country under a new name. Somewhere remote. Maybe Iceland.

By the time I returned to the table (after hiding in a cubicle for an uncomfortably long time, desperately trying to reset my entire existence), my friends were already laughing. Because, of course, they had seen everything.

"What happened?" someone asked, trying and failing to suppress a grin.
"Did you just assault a child with a door?"

I buried my face in my hands.
I didn't need to answer. The story would live on without me — exaggerated, embellished, and absolutely unforgettable.

Lessons learned:

Always open unfamiliar doors slowly.

Never declare your bodily functions to an entire table.

Always, always assume there might be a small child behind any door.

And maybe, just maybe, accept that no good story ever starts with "I was feeling really confident after three pints."

In conclusion:
 I am a terrible human. 
The child survived.
 And next time, I'll just hold it.