Day 101

I woke today with light flooding in my room. we have a metal door that has a metal latch, which can be locked from either the outside or the inside. this is not much different from a normal door, however there is one key difference in the way this door operates: if the door is latched from the outside, the people inside will be locked in and vice-versa. in the mornings this can be troublesome due to the fact that we all wake up at different times. if the person who wakes first exits the room, the door will stay open until someone gets out of bed and latches it shut from the inside. at this point the person who crawled from under their sheets to fix the light flood problem is now fully awake, and will more likely than not just stay awake, get dressed, and head finally for the office; thus leaving the last person in the room with the same open door predicament that the first person left the second person. the same problem can arise from the outside as well. since we all leave the office at different times in the night, the last person to come back to the room can often be stranded in the cold for a few moments as they bang on the locked door, which will wake everyone up, forcing them to get get out of bed and unlock the door. both of these scenarios can be very bothersome, so my team and i, being the bright and resourceful individuals we are, devised a seemingly foolproof plan for entering and exiting the room. when you leave the room in the morning, if you take the latch and slide it over just enough to catch on the other end, but not enough to full lock the door, the door will stay shut. the people in the room will be able to pull the door and it will swing open. the same works for the inside. no longer does the individual have to knock on the door, now they can just push the door open with the slightest ease, and PRESTO they are in the warm room and their roommates are still fast asleep. win-win.
now i feel that it's necessary to reveal that this plan is not without it's flaws, the biggest of which is the amount of fineness and dexterity it requires to get the latch in perfect, door shutting, position. i am not going to say that this task is anywhere comparable to rocket surgery, but i will say that there are two fatal mistakes that can be made. the first of which being: the person can fail in moving the latch over enough, even though the door will hold and give the illusion that the endevor has been completed. nothing could be further from the truth, for the moment they walk away the weight of the door will overpower the latch which is holding onto the receiver by the tips of it's fingers. in anywhere from five seconds to five minutes time, the door will lazily open, bringing with it the overwhelming light of morning. the second error is significantly more problematic, if the individual leaving the room moves the latch over too far, the people in the room are going to be locked inside for any number of hours. now, i'm not trying to throw anyone out to the wolves, but my esteemed colleague in the airborne, corporal west, is not good at either of the aforementioned skills. not only does he constantly lock the door from the inside, making it where i have to knock late at night, but he has also locked us in on several occasions. today however, he committed his greatest display of door/latch incompetence. i will explain:
first west wakes up and leaves the room, he tries the loose latch method and fails, a few moments later the door swings open, i wake up, shut the door, and lock it, once i get back in bed west comes back and wants to get in the room so he starts knocking, (it should be noted that the only time it is acceptable to fully lock the door is in the mornings), i get up and let him in (unbeknownst to me he had just gone to the bathroom), i begrudgingly get back into bed, west changes clothes and heads for the office, realizing the error in his first attempt of the day he slides the latch over too far, thus locking us in, flash forward a half an hour, i get up to go to the bathroom, try to open the door, however i quickly realize that the door is not going to open, i sit on my bed for a moment contemplating my next move, finally come to the conclusion that he isn't coming back anytime soon and i have a serious problem that needs to be taken care of, search through the dark for a water bottle, drink all of it, pee in it, and go back to bed, not even 5 minutes later west comes back to the room, opens the door and grabs one of his romance novels, shuts the door, this time he goes with the loose method and fails, a few moments later the door swings open again, and i am up for the day.

fig. 1 the fully locked position

fig. 2 the loose latch position

UPDATE:
it has just come to my attention, via my esteemed colleague in the airborne, sergeant wise, that upon my exit from the room, i failed the loose latch method. apparently, five minutes after i headed for the office, the door swung open. thus proving once and for all the amount of total concentration this task requires.