A Story From The Past

Yesterday Vince and I spent most of the day a bit farther south in Missouri. We ended up in Monett, which Chad and Nicole once lived so I took Vince by to show him the apartment they lived in there. It reminded me of this story from October, 2013. Addie was about 14 months old.

What I didn’t seem to say in this post is this:

Chad and Nicole had already rented the apartment but had not moved in. Chad was working so Nicole and I drove over there from where they were living, about 45 minutes away, to wait for a utility company or to measure . . I can’t remember why we went there but when we got there, there was a police car (or two) at an apartment across the street.

Being the one always to stick my nose in someone else’s business, I somehow managed to find out that someone had died in the apartment across the street. I don’t remember how I found that out.

This story seems like yesterday and it was over 8 years ago. Driving by the apartment, turning around in their driveway, it’s hard to believe how fast time passes.

Thinking back to where Chad, Nicole and Addie have lived, she was 14 months old and that was her third home. Now, she’s almost 9-1/2 and has only lived in two more places. I suppose five houses in less than 10 years is a lot but now that Chad isn’t changing locations with his job so often, they are probably where they’re going to be for a long time.

Here’s the old post:

Addie loves her new room.  She loves going in there and closing the door.  In the house they’re currently in, there are no doors on the bedroom where Addie sleeps.

There’s a lock on her new bedroom door.  It’s the kind with the button that you turn up and down to lock.  I told Nicole that it won’t be long before Addie is going to be able to reach that and since she loves to fiddle with things, she’s going to lock herself in the room so Nicole should get an ice pick or something to be able to open the door.

Nicole went in and looked at it and decided to see if she could open it with a nail.  She turned it to “lock”, went to get the nail and you know what happened  . .  Addie went in and slammed the door!  She was locked in the room.  She was fine for a minute but I think she sensed we were all in a panic and she began to cry.  The nail didn’t open the door.  Since they haven’t moved in yet, we had so few things in the apartment that we could try to use.  I went out to my car to see if I could find a knitting needle that might work and they still hadn’t removed the lady from the apartment across the street but now, there was a firetruck, firemen and a white van over there.  I didn’t want to get in the middle of the action so I walked to the end of Chad’s driveway and said “Can I borrow one of you firemen for a minute?”  The first fireman who came over told me the same thing had happened at his house when they first moved in and his wife had to call him from work to come unlock the door.

Three of them came over and tried a couple of things.  We had locked the windows back so we couldn’t get in through them.

Finally one of the firemen asked for a credit card.  That did the trick.

When he opened the door, Addie was so happy to see someone and then she realized it was a stranger and she was about to cry.  Nicole picked her up and said “Can you say thank you?”  She buried her head on Nicole’s shoulder and smiled but she wouldn’t say anything to him.

It ended up that the firemen had two jobs to do while they were in the neighborhood. Hopefully there will be no more of that kind of excitement for at least a few days.

Again, I’m sorry the lady passed away but was certainly glad the firemen were there.  The lock on that door will be taped and double taped so Addie can’t turn it and you can bet that won’t happen again!

Thanks to all firemen out there for all you do!