Grumpy Deals With a Household Problem

While the slacker world sleeps, Grumpy is on the job. His alarm shrills promptly at 3:40 a.m., which is just the first of many things that will make Grumpy, well, grumpy, all day long. Startled awake, he lunges for the alarm button, falls out of bed, and knocks a glass of forgotten bourbon off the nightstand onto his head. He says some very bad words.

"What fresh Hell is this?" moans the Savage Chef, wrenched deep from a savory culinary dream.


With a damp snarl, the Grump lurches to the bathroom and turns the shower tap on as high as it will go, as it takes some time to heat up water here at the Big Pink Pile of Stucco. His usual M.O. is to shave while the water is heating. The bathroom is on the second floor; there is only a tiny slit of a window near the ceiling. There is a door between the shower room and the sink area; it automatically pulls itself shut. These facts are important.

In the sink room, Grumpy shaves, and so forth. A few minutes have gone by; enough for the water to have heated. Grumpy tries to open the door. It will not open. He twists at the glass knob and pulls and tugs, but mysteriously, the door is stuck. Not as in swollen-wood shut, where a good, hard yank should take care of it; it seems that the door latch is not moving from its berth. Grumpy is a dignified man of some years, with a responsible supervisory position, so he does what he usually does in any frustrating situation.

He yells.

Once again, the Savage is torn from the arms of Morpheus ("Call me Mor") who, in the guise of a handsome young cabana boy, had just been about to serve her a tropical drink, little pink umbrella and all. Savage staggers into the sink room and finds the love of her life pounding furiously at the stubbornly shut portal. Steam is billowing from under the door.

"It won't open! What the hell?" screams Grumpy.

Grumpy shoves Savage aside and charges downstairs, naked as a caveman. More yelling and much banging emanate from the kitchen. The Grump returns, with the Savage Chef's good meat thermometer. The bathroom door has a safety feature, a tiny hole through which you can release the lock button, should a small child or suicidal spouse lock themselves inside. Leaving her brilliant mate futilely stabbing away at the tiny hole with the much-too-large thermometer, the Savage goes downstairs to fetch the ice pick. Upstairs, the pounding and cursing has resumed. Savage peeks out the front window to see if the police have arrived yet. She trudges back upstairs.

"Out of my way!" says Savage, brandishing the unsheathed ice pick. Grumpy has seen that movie too; he gets out of her way. Poking and picking at the lock-release hole doesn't do a bit of good. The walls are slick with moisture. One can barely see in the thick, steamy fog. Mushrooms begin sprouting in the corners, ferns curl from the floor tiles. Perhaps twenty minutes have passed since the nightmare began.

"I'm going to be late for work!" shouts Grumpy. He lives in terror of being less than punctual. In the Grumpy world, "punctual" means "at least half an hour early." His loving spouse frequently lies to him about the starting time of events lest they become social pariahs. Grumpy cannot be late. He makes an executive decision.

"I'm going to kick the door down."

He goes downstairs to get his boots. A few well-placed thuds from his steel-toed stompers, and much of the door lies scattered on the shower room floor. Grumpy reaches in and wrenches the door open. The water that has boiled from the shower head for almost a half hour has cooled to a refreshing tepidness. A few minutes later, the head of the household is out the door. Now, in addition to a Christmas tree, we get to buy a new door at the hardware store this weekend.

That afternoon, the Little Princess complains of all the noise, which disturbed her slumber. She asks what on earth went on. She is shown the door. She rolls her big, blue eyes.

"You people sure like to kick in doors around here!"

That is completely unfair, Savage Mom tells her. This was an emergency. About that other little incident, well, all that needs to be said is that a Savage has her reasons.