I don't believe it.  If you haven't read Click! yet, you might want to browse it for a preview of the insanity about to unfold.  The night in question was almost an identical set up.  Ann was going out for a night with adults for a little hiatus from the kids which she more than deserves and never does enough of.  I was all alone with the kids for the night.  No big deal of course.  However after reading Click! and the following story, you will be asking yourself why Ann ever leaves me alone with the kids.

Ann left the house around 6:45pm to go to a movie with some girl friends.  The fact that her cell phone is never charged does not really play a role in this story as she probably would have turned it off during the movie assuming all was OK with Super Dad at the helm.  The night took a drastic turn for the worse a short time after she was gone.  The kids and I had started bath time...employees of Social Services can stop reading now.  I put the kids in the tub, then went to get their PJs and Audrey a diaper (as she still wears diapers at bed time).  I was a bit disheartened to see that we didn't have any diapers left.  NOT ONE.  I checked diaper bags, cars, and any other place their might be one left hiding.  I checked our swim gear for a spare swim diaper, but we were definitely out.  I did not feel like packing the kids up in the car after bath time to make a run for Target and started thinking about my options.  All of a sudden a brilliant idea came to me.

Our neighbor has a day-care business and surely she'd have a spare diaper available.  I didn't know her phone number, but it was ten steps away and by the time I looked up the number and called her, I could just as easily walk over there and asked for a diaper and come back.  For the sake of entertainment, anyone who's mouth is hanging to the floor because I was going to step out of the house for thirty seconds while the kids were in a filling tub, let me just ask you, "What could go wrong?"  (that's dripping with sarcasm by the way)

My reasoning was: Josh is 4.5 and can 'swim' and Audrey is 2.5 and avoids going underwater at all costs, so any fears of accidents while I was outside the house were light years away.  I routinely start the water and get the kids in the warm tub, then go get their clothes and night supplies around the house while they wash, play, and soak.  This just seemed like one of the supplies I had to grab quick.

I flipped open the dead bolt and walked out the front door and ran over to the neighbors and knocked.  After 15-20 seconds of no answer, I figured she was either starting her kids bath time or simply busy with something so I decided to go back to the house to call her to ask.  When I grabbed the front door to walk in, the 'handle lock' was locked!  We never lock this lock, always the dead bolt, and my guess is either Audrey or Josh were playing with it at some point and we never noticed.  My first thoughts where "You gotta be 'effing kidding me!!!", "Ann doesn't have her phone", "Why didn't I re-hide the outside key in case of emergencies?"....oh shite.  "The kids are in the tub with running water"  All right, take a few deep breaths Terry.  Josh practically jumps out of his pants to answer the door whenever there is a knock or the doorbell is rung.  Surely, he'll answer the door if I ring.  So I started ringing the doorbell...and ringing...and ringing.  I started pounding on the door while ringing the doorbell, but still no movement inside the house.

I didn't want to start screaming at the front door and alert the neighborhood of the unfit father living at the end of the cult-de-sac, so I continued to ring the doorbell.  I must have hit that thing 1000 times in the five minutes I stood there but still there was no answer.  At this point, some 'bad thoughts' were entering my mind, but I forced them out, re-convincing myself they didn't hear the door bell because the water is running and they are yelling and playing in the tub.  I decided to go back to the deck, praying that Ann might have left it unlocked.  Anyone who knows Ann and her obsession with locking everything in the house is laughing right now.  Of course that was a dead end, but I was excited by the prospect of them hearing me while on the deck.  The sound waves had a more direct path to the bathroom when standing on the deck.  So I started knocking on the deck sliding door fairly loudly.  Still no answer.  Then I cupped my hands to the window and proceeded to yell for Josh and Audrey to open the door.  It was loud.  I am absolutely convinced that there was not a place in the house that would not have heard me screaming (although for fun, I should try it with Ann in the house to see how loud it really was).

I continued to knock on the door and scream with all my might.  It has probably been ten minutes now and my mind was having an internal war.

"Are they drowning?  Did Josh slip and knock himself out and Audrey doesn't know what to do?"

"They are fine."

"Should I break in?"

"They are fine, they play in tub all the time without issues."

"Should I break in?  I really don't want to break out a window or this door to find them 'playing' in the tub."

"I should break in!"

"They are fine!"

These thoughts are circling through my head every few seconds as I was continuing to pound on the deck door and yell with more and more ferocity.  I realized I was pounding so hard on the deck door, that the entire length of window pane was vibrating from top to bottom as I struck it.  I realized I better let up a bit or I would break right through it.  By this time, the 'bad thoughts' were 'winning' in my mind.  I started to look like a confused, caged animal.  I was running back and forth from a window on the lower level getting ready to kick it in, then convincing myself that that was a mistake and running back up to the deck door to yell and pound some more.  On the second or third trip back to the deck after convincing myself not to break through the lower window, I started to pound again.  Although this time, the vibration of the deck door was a bit more than I had realized.

As I was performing what looked like some strange form of CPR on the door, alternating between pounding it and then cupping my mouth to the glass and yelling, all the vibrating had caused a bottle of wine to work its way loose from the rack hanging on the wall just to the left of the deck door.  It fell to the floor and exploded all over in front of the door I was trying to enter.  And of course it had to be RED WINE!

I don't know how long it has been up to this point, but it must have been at least 15-20 minutes, but my problem had compounded as now my dining room appeared to me like some perverted scene from the movie Saw.  My brain played out the scene to me; Audrey and Josh hear me screaming, they are scared and finally come out of the bathroom, wet and naked, see me 'terrified' at the deck door and try to open it for me.  The Saw part of the scene is that they have to walk across glass shards of wine bottle sprinkled on the floor to 'save me'.  Their feet get sliced open and in combination with that and their wet feet slipping on the wood floor, they fall to their back and slice themselves even more.  OK, I'll stop with the gory details my brain was torturing me with, but at this point, I finally decided enough was enough.  I ran to my neighbors and pounded on her door (hopefully not as hard as I was on my deck door).  I told her I need a crowbar now!  I have an emergency.  I didn't go into details too much, as this was the same neighbor that was involved in Click! as well and I can only imagine what they think of my little capers.  She opened her garage door, and we found a drywall hammer.  I took it and sprinted back to the deck to check and make sure neither of my kids were lying on the dining room floor covered in blood, then immediately decided how I was going to break in.  I went to the lower level window to our workout/storage room and quickly determined that I wanted to pull the window off and out instead of shattering the window inwards all over my treadmill and the rest of my house only adding to the amount of broken glass I was going to have to clean up.  Don't ask me how I rationalized this in that split second, but I did.

By this time, my neighbor had made it around to the back of my house a bit worried about how I had sprinted off without even a thank you.  She asked me something, but my brain wasn't listening.  I stuck the hammer in a crevice of the window and pried outward.  It simply splintered off a few millimeters of the window framing.  I was worried I was going to end up having to break through it, but gave it one more try.  I pushed the hammer in as far as I could and pried.  The window framing gave way enough so that I could slip my fingers behind it while the hammer held it in place.  I yanked the window, completely destroying all the hardware that keeps the window locked and functional, and pulled the window off of the house.  Looking back, it was surprising how easy it was to rip it off...or maybe I just had that paternal adrenaline going.  I kicked off the inner screen, and jumped down to the treadmill wondering if my worst nightmares were going to be realized as I entered the house.  Immediately upon rushing out of the downstairs room, I could hear the kids laughing and playing in the tub above.  An immense relief came over me, but as I raced into the bathroom, an ugly emotion was unleashed on my kids.  You know the emotion I'm talking about.  The kind you see in shows/movies where a parent, overcome with emotional release, 'screams' at a kid who narrowly avoided some tragic accident because of their 'innocent' actions/decision.

I burst into the bathroom with adrenaline and emotion oozing from my pours.  "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!  DIDN'T YOU HEAR ME YELLING?!  DIDN'T YOU HEAR ME RINGING THE DOORBELL!!??  WHY DIDN'T YOU ANSWER?!?!  I HAD TO BREAK IN A WINDOW!!"  Both kids were completely taken aback and realized with my tone and facial expressions that 'something was extremely wrong'.  They both immediately started balling, completely scared and unaware of 'what was going on'.  So now I was in full retreat.  Trying to get my heartbeat back to normal, I also had to calm down the kids who were now more shaken than I ever was during the ordeal.  After the trembling and sobbing had subsided with me telling them it was not their fault at all, Dad was just very scared, Dad loves you guys so much, etc.  Josh gave his 'innocent' answer (just like the movies), I didn't answer the door because I didn't want to get the floor all wet.  Looking at me like this answer/reason trumped any possible objection that I might have.

So the emergency was over, but Dad's torture, physical at least, was just starting.  By now, the red wine that exploded all over the dining room has been soaking into the wood for a good 15 minutes.  After quickly dressing the kids, I went out there quickly to clean it.  I picked up the big pieces as fast as possible, then grabbed an old towel to mop up the wine and any small pieces that I might have missed.  Well, in my hasty handling of the towel, flipping it over and over to find dry spots along with wringing it out, tiny glass slivers embedded themselves in both my hands.  I didn't really realize it until I was done with my attempt at cleaning (the stain didn't completely come out).  I was picking out little slivers of glass from my hands for 4-5 days, or more accurately, waiting for the glass to be naturally expunged from my hand.  Obviously, I couldn't see or grab them, I just had to wait until all the glass and sharp stabbing was gone.  Glad I type all day long ;)

To end this terrible deja vu, by the time I was finishing up in the dining room, Josh and Audrey had wandered out to the edge of the wooden floor and after all that had happen, Josh put everything in perspective.  With the enthusiasm of a kid who was about to see a new toy, he asks "Can we see the broken window downstairs?"