Inquiring minds want to know

about the whole getting locked out thing aaaaaand, well gee. I'm just not sure I want to share. Especially since every time we tell this story in person, the listener asks, with great trepidation, "Did you hide a key outside somewhere?" We kind of look sheepishly at each other and say, "Well... not yet." Which doesn't say much for our collective smarts now, does it? (To our credit, we don't have terribly good experiences hiding keys outside, having once hid our neighbors' spare key outside for friends instead of our own, and also having to search all over an apple tree for my in-laws' spare key. My father-in-law, not satisfied with simply sliding the key under a doormat or inside a flower pot, decided to TIE the spare key to a TREE branch and then, by way of explaining where we could find it, said it was at EYE LEVEL. To which we said, "Huh?" and also, "WHOSE eye level???" Suffice to say that we never found the spare key in the tree, but it didn't matter because Phillip carries his own spare key to my in-laws' house, thereby NEGATING THE ENTIRE OPERATION IN THE FIRST PLACE.)

HI. I LIKE CAPITAL LETTERS.

So anyway. Friday night we were just sitting around trying to figure out how to get some air circulation going in our house (it was 88 degrees on Friday. Today it is barely 60. Bye bye sunburn.) Then some friends dropped by to borrow our grill for their party the next night. La la la, all is well in the world. Happy drinky laughy Friday evening. Then the friends leave and Phillip and I are standing in the "mud room" (seriously. Mud room? Is just an excuse not to lay tile or wood on the floor and instead stain the concrete which even the builder admitted was stupid as it is more trendy than useful and 50 times harder than putting tile down) talking about what switch turns on the light outside, whether or not we should always lock the door to the garage and if the front door locks automatically when you shut it. It then occurs to us that we have not checked the mail since we moved in. I run up to get the mail key and we dash outside to check out our Brand New Very Own Mail Box. (We are exceptionally dorky new homeowners.) There's nothing good inside, only heaps of boring home insurance papers, and we take our time walking barefoot through our Brand New Very Own Lawn. To find that the door is shut. And locked.

Phillip: OH @&*$.

Maggie: Huh.

Phillip: It's locked.

Maggie: You think?

Phillip: We locked it from the inside. Because we are IDIOTS.

Maggie: We were excited about getting the mail.

Phillip: Because we are @#(*#$%&* IDIOTS.

Maggie: HEY. YOU shut the door Mr. SmartyPants.

Phillip: checking every pocket Okay, I don't have a key. Who has a key? Have we given any keys to anyone?

Maggie: Only your dad. He's asleep.

Phillip: with mortal fear WE CAN'T CALL MY DAD.

Maggie: I KNOW. Let's call Sean.

Phillip: We have no phones.

Maggie: Seriously? You mean you left your home with out a small electronic gadget velcroed somewhere to your body?

Phillip: You make fun, but NOW YOU SEE THE PURPOSE OF THE BELT CLIP.

Maggie: Okay, let's walk to a store and call a locksmith.

Phillip: We aren't wearing shoes.

Maggie: What about the garage door opener in the car? That will get us in.

Phillip: We don't have ANY KEYS. We can't get inside the car. And if we could, we locked the garage door. BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU WANTED.

Maggie & Phillip: stare forlornly at the front door. Which is made of glass. Which they totally think about breaking, but neither of them are exactly MacGyver and/or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So we sucked it up and went to knock on a neighbor's door. We first went to knock on J's door because J was really nice to Phillip and mowed everyone's lawn. Except he wasn't home. And the people next door to J weren't home either. That left our next door neighbor K who I have not yet spoken to because every time I go out to check on the plants, she scurries back inside. (Not that I have made an effort to Meet The Neighbors either. New people! Cooties!)

However, we are barefoot and wearing shorts and tank tops. We have no phone, we have no keys. WE ARE AT K'S MERCY. At the very least we need her phone to call up our old neighbors and grovel our way into crashing on their futon because it is tragically apparent that there is absolutely no chance we are ever getting inside our Brand New Very Own One-Week-Old House.

So I'm the one who ring's K's doorbell (because I need to put on the appearance of being helpful and proactive and hide the pathetic reality that I am a whiny whimpering crybaby.) And K mercifully appears. She is, at that moment, the most beautiful and wonderful person we have EVER SEEN.

K: Hi?

P & M: OH GOD OH GOD PLEASE HELP US

K: Um, ok?

P & M: WE ARE SO SORRY YOU HAVE MORONS FOR NEIGHBORS. REALLY. PLEASE FORGIVE US.

K: You want to use the phone?

P & M: YOU ARE OUR BESTEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. BFF!

K totally invites us upstairs to sit on her big cushy couch and watch baseball and chat and do we want anything to drink and we can totally use her cell phone and it's totally okay to call 411 to find a locksmith and it's way cool with her if we hang out in her living room until an hour later when the locksmith shows up. Talk about mortification. Not to mention our dirty bare feet all over her house and interrupting her while she's cooking. But she chatted us up about crooked refrigerators and how to get garbage cans and how the house was so designed by a man because the master closet is so small! In short, K? Exactly the kind of person who should be sharing the other half of your townhouse unit.

Unfortunately, the locksmith couldn't find our house. So Phillip and I took K's cell phone and stood outside on the corner looking for some kind of locksmithy-looking truck. But our guy was driving a little beat up Toyota and, when faced with the Super Annoying one way street, turned his car around and drove BACKWARDS to our house. His quick thinking and agility, however, were sadly limited to driving as it took him half an hour to pick one side of our lock ("This one is high security!") and found it impossible to pick the other side. He went back to his car and came back with a Big Ass Drill and spent another 15 minutes ripping a hole into our shiny one-week-old doorknob. Grief! Shame! Eternal Mortification!

He was supposed to call and come back the next morning and replace the lock (he'd only brought GOLD doorknobs with him and that just wouldn't do), but around 11 am the next day I picked up the phone- just to check- and there was NO DIAL TONE. I ended up ditching the whole affair for raspberry shortcake and hippie skirts at the Folklife Festival and left Phillip to tell off the locksmith and have everything done at Home Depot.

So... the Red Couch Fund is a tiny bit depleted... but no worries! And it IS nice to know that if someone wants to break in, they'll have to DRILL and it will take them FOREVER. (Or break the glass, I guess. But that's just messy.)

K came by yesterday to borrow a cocktail shaker. I gladly handed it off. As far as I'm concerned, K gets ANYTHING HER LITTLE HEART DESIRES.

Snide comments and snotty advice will be ignored at: mightymaggieATgmailDOTcom

Comments

[Sean]

Ah, Maggie! I love it! I couldn't help laughing out loud to myself as I read about the lockout -- EVEN though I've already HEARD the story! I'm absolutely positive my nearest roomy must think I'm crazy for sitting across the hall all alone chuckling to myself...

[young]

Ditto for me -- I was cracking up all by myself -- helps that I can hear your voices as I read it :) See you guys soon!!!