Ah…The Joys of Parenthood
By Jimmy Bunn Jr.

Theresa (my wife), our three urchins, and I live in a house built in the fifties. As I learned recently, they made things to last back then, including bathroom drawers.

One of those drawers is right up against the bathroom door. Remember this. It will become important later in our story. In addition to being quite stout, they can tend to get stuck open. This too will be important later.

We have childproof "thingies" (I believe that is the official term) on them, but even so you can open them about an inch before the lock blocks them from going any further. Stick with me now. This will be the last thing you will need to know to appreciate everything else that I am about to tell you.

My youngest, Bettie, managed to sneak into the bathroom, shut the door and then open the drawer that inch. When she did this, she effectively locked herself in the bathroom. The door could only open a little bitty "peephole" bit, and I couldn't get the drawer closed enough to get the door fully open.

Did I mention the drawer was stuck…wedged open…and Bettie couldn't (or wouldn't, I have my suspicions) re-shut the drawer even that one inch?

Imagine our hero (me...if you were wondering), a man with a college degree, a law degree and YEARS of experience completely confounded by a drawer, a door and a two year old. The villain of our story (yes, a two year old…do you have a problem with that?) finds herself in a virtual paradise of several razors to slice herself up, a $150 bottle of perfume Mommy got for Christmas to pour down the sink and every single stinking aspirin in the house to insure her Daddy stranded outside the bathroom door will continue to suffer from that migraine she's given him.

That's not even the whole story. For the first 45 minutes she was very happy in there by herself. What two year old in her right mind wouldn't be! In fact, she was so happy locked in there that when I would stick things through the infinitesimally small open area available to try to push the drawer closed she would scream bloody murder "NO!!" and grab the stuff out of my hands thereby keeping it away from the drawer. She developed quite the collection of screwdrivers, butter knifes and coat hangers in there with her.

Oh yeah, she's potty training and had taken her diaper off while she was in there. A naked baby surrounded with sharp poking items. Who could ask for more? That's family fun at its finest I tell you.

Eventually our hero surrendered to the evildoing of our villain. I ended up getting a claw hammer and chopping a hole through the door to get in, get Bettie out, and get the drawer closed. I felt like Jack Nicholson trying to get at Shelly Duval in The Shining." HEEEEEEERE'S JOHNNY!"

I've never wanted to kill one of my children before then. Well, truthfully, I never wanted to kill one as much as I wanted to kill Bettie at that particular moment. If I'm completely honest, I have been known to see red every once in a while.

Luckily, the fact that my wife (an Oklahoma City police officer) carries a gun for a living keeps me from doing anything too stupid. Unluckily for me, Bettie appears to be taking after her daddy. Ah, the simple joys of parenthood.

Jimmy Bunn Jr. is chief legal counsel for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation in Oklahoma City.