I Was Recently Trapped in a Garage (Not Clickbait)

It’s been a hot minute since I had a good story of stellar buffoonery to share with the internet, so consider this my Christmas gift to you all.

As many of you know, instead of taking the traditional young-20’s route of going to college, getting a degree, and being able to get a real job where I wear button down shirts and someone else pays for my health insurance, I decided to go my own way and cobble together a meagre existence from various part-time jobs. I am essentially Burt from Mary Poppins, lanky limbs and all. It is glorious and I regret nothing.

One of my part-time jobs is working as a personal shopper and grocery deliverer. Considering the fact that I didn’t read 90% of my orientation information and have been learning almost exclusively through mistakes, in general most shopping days go pretty smoothly. However, whither I go, there disaster often follows, so the other day some pretty absurd events came to pass.

My first mistake was trying to shop 2 orders at the same time. I have done this before and it worked out totally fine. In my hubris, I thought I could pull it off again, but on this day they were both fairly large orders and Meijer was really busy and poorly stocked. As I was going through the checkout, I calculated that I would be able to deliver one order on time, and one would be about 15 minutes late. Not bad considering the 52-67 things that had gone amiss while shopping. THEN, like the phone-illiterate boomer I am, I hit the wrong button on my phone and processed the order before paying for the groceries, meaning I had to get on the phone with Shopper Support and be on hold for like 12 minutes with the most wretchedly cheerful music playing in my ear. By the time all was sorted, I was going to be truly and shamefully late to both homes, but there was nothing to do but trudge on and grovel at the feet of the customers over text. They were both really nice about it, but one lady had to pick her daughter up from school, so she said to text her when I arrived and she would open the garage remotely, which I’m assuming means she is a wizard. So, I pull up, text her, and lo, like the drawbridge to a mighty fortress, the magical door opens. I hop out of my car and start bringing groceries inside the garage, when all of a sudden, alarms start going off and the garage starts closing with me inside it.

Now you would THINK, considering how many times I have watched each and every Indiana Jones movie, my instinct in this situation would be roll out from under the slowly closing booby-trap door, perhaps losing my hat in the process and grabbing it just before the mechanical maw sealed it away forever. But no, I just stood there like an imbecile, and serenely watched as the garage door very slowly imprisoned me, perhaps for life. I’m really glad they added “freeze” to the list of ways you can respond to crisis, because neither fight nor flight is my talent. I DID, however, for some reason think it was appropriate to text the lady what was happening live:

If, indeed, I were to freeze in the moment of crisis, you would think that once I had been sealed away, I would at least begin to look for an escape route, but no, I stood there giggling weakly at what my life had become for several minutes, and then (and I’m so sorry for the millennial stereotype I’m about to fulfil) I sent my cousin Corrie a Marco Polo video message about my current predicament. It was a beautifully absurd moment and it needed to be memorialized on film.

At this point, and indeed, probably long before this point, you have probably been thinking, “couldn’t she just press the open button inside the garage?”

Yes. Yes I could have. But do you know how long it took me to realize that? An embarrassing amount of time. I want to blame it on the fact that I am lower-middle class and have never personally owned a garage in my life, but the reality is that I was having too much fun wallowing in this epochal moment in the timeline of my life’s ridiculousness to think critically about the situation. Eventually, I realized that of course there would be a button, and instantly found it. I was freed from my prison right as the lady and her daughter were getting home, and she let me in the kitchen door and we all unloaded her La Croix and accompanying groceries together. I’d like to add that her house was gorgeous and historical looking (which I asked about) and she was Australian (which I also asked about). It had occurred to me earlier, as the garage door was closing and all went dark around me, that this entire shopping trip had been an elaborate ruse just to lure me into her garage and murder me, but she was very nice, and not at all murderous, though considering how late I was, she had a right to be. She also gave me a huge tip, which almost brought me to tears, and I now consider myself indebted to her and all her descendants for as long as I live. When I told my friend Elena about what had transpired she told me that my life was like a Hallmark rom-com, except instead of being trapped in the garage of the man I eventually fall in love with, it’s a kind Australian lady who gives me $25, which, honestly, is preferable. Love don’t pay the bills.