Yesterday, I returned home with my family, having been out shopping for wedding dresses for my wife and daughter (that is to say dresses that are appropriate for attending a wedding, not the white ones generally worn by the Woman Of The Hour) to find the neighbour lady, Diane, wandering forlornly between her house and ours, looking somewhat distressed. As we got out of the car, she approached us and explained that she had locked herself out of the house. She had stepped outdoors for just a moment and a self-locking door swung shut behind her. All of her other doors happened to be locked as well.Diane explained that her bathroom window, which could be slid open and had a fly screen that could be removed without even so much as a screwdriver, was the most promising point of entry, but she herself was unable to pass through it. With the lower pane slid upward as far as it could go, the window offered a rectangular opening roughly two feet high by three feet wide and Diane, being a rather portly woman, couldn't even lift a leg up over the lower sill, which hung some three feet off the ground, let alone fit through the opening.
I tried to climb through. I did somewhat better than Diane, as I was at least able to get a leg over the lower sill. Although I don't exactly boast the most svelt of physiques myself, I might have been able to squeeze through if I could have somehow levitated myself feet-first through the opening in a prone, horizontal position. Unfortunately, I'm also not the most limber of people. Once I had one leg over the sill, I found it absolutely impossible to bend my torso in such a way that it would fit through the opening without contorting my leg in a manner that would have resulted in dislocating my hip joint.
So I called upon my daughter, Jessica. Now, the open window was small enough to pose a challenge even for a seventeen-year-old teenage girl, especially one who's in no danger of becoming anorexic herself it you take my meaning. Robust waistlines appear to be a common trait in my immediate family. Even our cat is fat, although I do grant that she could have easily fit through the open window. I had considered tossing her inside but it's extremely unlikely that she would have obliged us by unlocking the front door for us. More likely, she would have raided an open pantry or amused herself shredding Diane's finest woolen afghan (yes, she still has her claws) or perhaps she would have simply contented herself with a general exploration of Diane's unfamiliar dwelling but I can assure you that the purpose for which I sent her into the house in the first place would have been the farthest thing from her feline mind. Cats are self-absorbed like that.
So it fell to Jessica, as I say, to climb in through the window, with a little help from myself. She lifted both legs up and through the window, so that she was sitting on the lower sill and then laid back her upper body in a horizontal attitude, with me supporting her, so that she was able to slide the rest of the way through. It was still a tight squeeze, even for Jessica, who later commented that the narrow lower sill of the window had cut into her back most uncomfortably, but she made it inside.
I wonder if the Beatles realized, in 1969, that they were writing about my daughter, who wouldn't even be born for another 24 years?