Every bit of the flight was going smoothly for the first 90% of our beverage service in the main cabin (economy). I was facing the front of the cabin and was working backwards, my co-worker working on the other end of the cart. We only had about 8 rows left to serve when I heard a bang behind me. I figured either something fell off our counter in the back galley or a passenger was trying to do some ridiculous stretches (I hear, "I get blood clots when I sit too long," more than I ever thought I would) and ran into something. My co-worker and I made eye contact and shared an "Oh Brother, what now?" eye roll. Whatever it was, I figured it wasn't worth my energy to turn around and find out - I had a cart half-full of beverages and a handful of thirsty Texans left to get Coke to.
Friends, I was wrong.
The banging did not cease. It increased. Getting louder and more frequent. Then I heard my co-worker say, "Um, I think someone is stuck in the bathroom...?" This is a not-all-that-uncommon issue, as parents evidently take care of their kids less and less in public places these days (I have been asked to bring children to the bathroom on flights before. But after explaining to them that I don't have kids for the sole reason that I don't want the responsibility of taking another human being to the bathroom, they decide to let the kid go to the bathroom by herself. Good call, mom). I finished serving my friendly Texan row and turned around to go assess the situation and set the probably sobbing child free. As soon as I turned around, I confirmed, indeed: There was someone stuck in the bathroom. And they clearly wanted out. Ten minutes ago.
The door was bowing out and shaking as if it were convulsing. A guy in the last row hopped up and attempted to help the bathroom hostage. Mental note: If I need someone to make a situation worse than it already is, call on that guy. Now he and the bathroom hostage were both pushing and pulling on the door as if they were in a raging game of airplane tug-of-war. And war it was, trying to pry this guy off the bathroom door so I could do the unthinkable: Unlock It.
You may be saying, "But you were on the outside, and usually the lock is on the inside!" If you said that, you are one smart being who is about to be brilliant... Like many other doors you may have encountered in life, airplane bathroom doors also have a way of unlocking from the outside. You just can't tell, because you aren't supposed to use that function. I am. For situations such as this. So eventually I got rodeo clown to simmer down and move out of my way. As I was going for the external unlocking mechanism, I heard one of the strangest noises I've ever heard. And it came from within the bathroom. I now know that it was human, but at the time I was not sure. It was sort of a cry of distress, but kind of just a loud howl. Then I wasn't so sure I wanted to unlock the door. But I knew it would eventually be opened, so I braced myself and proceeded. The moment that I unlocked the door, it flung open. And where I expected to see a young, distraught boy (based on the tone of the howl and the vigor of the door shaking. Usually little girls just sit in there and sob while boys try to break the door down.), stood a - brace yourself ... middle-aged woman. A seemingly calm, cool and collected full-grown female. She looked at me and simply strode out of the bathroom without a word. The entire rear half of the airplane was now staring at us with dropped jaws because of all the ruckus. Not only because of the ruckus, because I guarantee if a child would have burst out of that bathroom they all would have felt bad and looked away. But it was not a confused child who wasn't "using their words". It was a woman in her early-40s not using her words.
"Uh ... was ... the lock stuck... or something?" I managed to stutter after her as she began walking up the aisle back to her seat. "Oh. Yeah! I couldn't get it unlocked," she responded coolly. No kidding. I know she was acting so chill when she walked out of there, but I know she was freaked out because on the primal animal noises she was making. So the least she could have done was tossed a "thanks" to the person who freed her from the big bad locked airplane bathroom. It's just good manners.
Anyways. You know when you and a good friend share a joke or both see something hilarious and you can't make eye contact or you will both burst out laughing? Well that's what the rest of the service was like. Except not with one good friend of mine - it was with every single other person on the plane. I took a deep breath and turned to a young man sitting in the next row I was to serve. But when he looked at me with his nearly-watering eyes from holding in laughter and asked for a Sprite, I lost it. I burst out laughing, which made no less than 10 other people burst out as well. It's like everyone was a little bomb (I'm not saying there were bombs on an airplane), and when one goes off it sets the others off and they keep making each other explode. And I even said to strangers what I always say to my friends when they make me laugh at inappropriate times: "Stop making me laugh." (I think every time I've said this to someone the only thing they were doing to "make me laugh" was looking at me. Sometimes that's all it takes.) To which an old man replied, "It's good to laugh!" So I smiled and nodded but in my head thought, "Not at people who aren't trying to be funny."
When we got all of our giggles out and finally finished the service, all of a sudden the bathroom lady appeared back in our galley. I was shocked, but glad to see she hadn't locked herself into another small space and was also not violently and loudly throwing her weight into any part of the plane. I asked her if she wanted a beverage. I figured she probably really exerted herself while beating the crap out of a door and imitating Tarzan, and it was true. She needed to refuel with a Diet Coke. As I was getting it for her, and pretending to work much harder than I was so she would think I was concentrating too hard to make small talk, she spoke of the incident... "That was just so crazy - that's never happened to me before!" I assumed she was talking about getting locked in an airplane bathroom, but I would not have been surprised if she was also referring to her ridiculous reaction of fear that morphed into rage. So I just handed her Diet Coke over, smiled and said, "I've never seen anything quite like that before either."
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