I Got Locked in a Bathroom Back When Embarrassment Had an Expiration Date

I was a 14-year-old freshman halfback at Altoona High School, and on Parents' Night, we were losing 6-0 to Owen-Withee. At halftime, the team headed into the school shop area for the usual bathroom break and chalk talk.

I stayed behind a few seconds too long.

When I tried to leave the bathroom, the steel door wouldn't open. The handle spun, but nothing caught. There were no ceiling panels, no easy way out, and no cell phone in my pocket because cell phones still belonged somewhere near science fiction.

The assistant coach, the man we called Bear, came looking for stragglers. I told him I was trapped, and his answer came immediately: "Yeah, right, Dave."

Then he tried the door. Suddenly, Dave wasn't kidding.

Soon the principal and athletic director were outside. The principal reassured me I'd be fine, then whispered something about calling the fire department and possibly slipping food under the door.

I reminded him that doors, unlike soundproof booths, allow voices to travel.

Eventually Lenny, our longtime janitor, arrived with tools. He slid one under the door and calmly walked me through removing the collar around the knob.

I pulled my half of the handle off, Lenny worked from the other side, and the door opened. I grabbed my helmet and ran back toward the field.

By then, we were down 13-0. Worse, word had traveled through the packed stands. My parents knew, students knew, hell, everybody knew that the freshman halfback had somehow managed to get himself locked in a bathroom at halftime.

As I approached Fuzzy Thurston Field (Fuzzy grew up in Altoona!), something happened that I still remember more than four decades later.

The crowd stood and applauded.

My head coach called me over in the middle of the action, stuck out his hand, and said, "Damn glad to have you back!"

They knew, laughed, and then they cheered.

And after a while, it ended.

That's the part that seems almost foreign today. Kids were cruel when I was young. Adults could be cruel, too. Bullying didn't arrive with Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram. 

But embarrassment usually had borders. A stupid moment might follow you through school, around town, or home to the supper table. It didn't automatically become permanent public property.

Today, the bleachers are never empty.

A 2026 national survey of U.S. teens found roughly three-quarters of teen users on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat view harassment and bullying on those platforms as a problem for people their age. A separate Pew study in 2025 found 48% of teens believed social media has a mostly negative effect on people their age, up from 32% in 2022.

A humiliating moment can now be recorded, uploaded, clipped, slowed down, captioned, reposted, mocked by strangers, and preserved before a kid even gets home.

The audience isn't a football crowd anymore. It's potentially everybody.

Something important was lost when embarrassment stopped expiring.

That Altoona crowd didn't protect me from being embarrassed. Believe me, everybody got the joke. They didn't pretend the story wasn't funny, and I wouldn't have wanted them to.

What they did was better.

They knew when to stop.

They let a 14-year-old kid have his ridiculous moment without turning the ridiculous moment into the kid's identity. Then they stood up and welcomed him back onto the field.

Maybe that's a little grace we've forgotten. Mercy doesn't require pretending nothing happened; humor doesn't require cruelty, and one embarrassing moment shouldn't become a life sentence handed down by thousands of strangers staring at screens.

I got locked in a bathroom in front of practically everybody I knew. They laughed, they cheered, and then they let me get back in the game.

Embarrassment had an expiration date.

I miss that.

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