Lord of the Keys

As we only have one set of keys, the morning ritual is for Lori to walk out the door for work and me to lock it behind her leaving me with the keys so that I can lock the door behind me when I go to school. This morning nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Lori slid on her flip flops in an effort to convince the winds of autumn that it is indeed still summer and walked out the door. I drug myself out of bed and went to the lock it.

Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, observe exhibit A:



This is our lock. You pull the knob to the right while turning the handle below to open the door.

Exhibit B:



This is our key. It’s like a castle key. There’s no real reason for me to show it to you except that I like it. To open our door you put the key in the lock, push it in, turn it 90 degrees, pull it out halfway and then open the door. Locking it is even more complicated.

As I went to lock it, on other side of our metal-plated-bulletproof-no-one-could-get-in-here-if-they-tried door Lori heard a “BOING,” something hitting the floor and my voice letting out a worried “Uh oh…”

Lori: What just happened?

Me: Um, the lock just fell apart. The door won’t open.

I scrambled to try to find the pieces of the lock but all I saw was the orangy-fuzz of our floor. I told her to wait while I went to find my glasses. When I came back I managed to find a spring, a screw and a knob. Now, I was never good at puzzles and even if the lock had come with instructions I likely would not have been able to make heads or tails of it. I tried unsuccessfully to jam the knob back in the lock so I could open it.

Me: Well, I hope there’s not a fire today. I’ll be sure not to cook anything today…Our oven seems particularly flame-inclined…The teapot’s out too…(Our big windows are sealed shut. The little ones on top open, though. I suppose this is to keep burglars out of our first-floor apartment, but I often think it’s just to keep us from enjoying the breeze.)

Lori: Calyn…

Me: Hey, maybe Amberly will come by today and unlock it. I mean, surely I won’t starve before she comes by again. Her winter shoes are here. She’ll come before the first snow…

Lori: Calyn, you freak, drop the keys out the kitchen window and I’ll come around and try to unlock the door. You give up way too easily.

Me: Oh. Yeah. You could do that. Maybe I will get to see the sun again…

I dropped the keys out the window to Lori which made me think about Rent when Mark throws Collins the keys and Collins gets beat up. I hoped that wouldn’t happen to Lori. Thankfully a few seconds later I heard the keys going in our defective lock and eureka! it opened. Unlike me, Lori has a gift for putting pieces back together. She’s had to put me back together so many times she’s had lots of practice. So she got the door opened, the lock back together and left the apartment. All in a day’s work, she’d say. Good job, Lori. Молодец.