A few days ago, Noah and I were hanging out together in the morning and we both wanted to go to the Boulder Reservoir to go swimming while Mama got some more sleep.

I remembered that we had a little inflatable raft that he could sit in while being in the water and I opened the closet under our stairs to find it.

It’s a tight fit to get my body in this tiny closet, which I think was made for short Irish people back in 1899, when the house was built.

I reached to turn on the light, which is at the back of the closet and my shirt got hooked on one of the coat hooks on the back of the closet door, which rather efficiently closed the door behind me and turned off the light at the same time.

I fumbled around in the dark, hunched over in this tiny space in between the winter coats and the vacuum cleaner and tried to find the door handle to open the door.

It didn’t take long to realize that there wasn’t one. The latch was on the outside of the door only. Sigh…

Noah was in the living room watching Seasame Street, so I called out to him.

“Noah! Come over here,” I said.

I heard a giggle.

“Noah, come here. Papa’s in the closet. Come over here.”

“Papa!” he said. And I heard his little feet thumping their way over to the closet door.

“Hi Papa. Hi…,” more laughter. He thought I was playing a game.

“Papa! Papa!” he kept shouting.

“Hi Noah. Listen, Papa is stuck. Papa…stuck…in…the…closet.”

“Hi Papa!”

“Hi Noah. Papa is stuck. Can you open the door please? Noah open door please?”

Silence. Then, I hear his little hands reaching up and trying to turn the old knob on the latch holding the door shut. It was a good sign that he could reach it, but he could barely reach it, and he was probably standing on his tip toes.

“Help, Papa. Help,” he said, as he tried to turn the knob.

“Turn the handle, Noah. You can do it. Turn…handle.”

“Help…help, please,” he said, as he reached and did his best to turn the knob.

“Okay, Noah, that’s not going to work….Can you go up and get Mama? Tell Mama that Papa is stuck, okay? Go tell Mama that Papa is stuck.”

“Okay,” and off he went, little feet thumping their way up the stairs above my head.

“Mama! Mama!” he said as he made his way up the stairs.

And into our bedroom he went, waking up the sweet sleeping Mama.

I couldn’t hear him at this point, but later found out that he gently woke her up and said,

“Mama, Mama….Papa tsuck. Papa tsuck.”

Bari couldn’t understand what he was saying, because he was reversing the “s” and the “t” in “stuck.”

“Papa’s truck?” Mama asked.

“Papa tsuck!!” Noah replied.

While this was going on I realized that I had my cell phone in my pocket, so I called the home phone, told Mama bear what was going on and apologized for waking her up.

“Ooooooohhhhh. You’re saying ‘Papa stuck!’ Well, let’s go get him out!”

I was soon released from my dark prison under the stairs, rescued by Mama bear and Noah Nooey.

I grabbed the raft on the way out, and we had a grand time that morning at the reservoir.

Thanks for saving me guys!