Archive for March, 2009
It’s a lock
Posted on March 31, 2009
I live alone. Not terribly far from people I know and love, but I am the only person who lives in my apartment. There is a plant that lives here too, but it has a generally passive role in the ecosystem. I don’t have a washing machine in my apartment, but there are several in the basement. I set an alarm on my phone for when my clothes are ready to be moved from the washer to the dryer, or when they need to go back in the closet. Last night I did my laundry.
I put my laundry in the machine and ate dinner. My alarm went off so I trotted outside and closed my door, just as I realized I didn’t have my keys. My doorknob still turns from the inside if the door is locked, so while I could get out, I could now not get back in. I stood in front of my door in stunned silence for a few minutes. I considered what my options were:
- Could I kick the door down?
- Could I get in through a window?
- Would the apartment office offer some kind of assistance?
It seemed like a bad idea to get caught by my neighbors trying to destroy my own door. I put my laundry in the dryer. I rang my next door neighbor’s doorbell. A girl answered the door and fought her way off the phone with her chatty aunt. I told her that I was her neighbor and that I had locked myself out. Thankfully I was wearing marginally presentable clothes. I was wearing my slippers though. My neighbor let me use her phone and computer. The apartment office informed me they offered no help in this situation, and since it was now 7:00 p.m. many locksmiths were closed. I was given the name of a local locksmith by a not local locksmith. They said they would arrive in 45 minutes.
My neighbor is a high school and middle school art teacher. We talked about our local schools, both being Montgomery County children. She was very accommodating considering the half-dressed shell-shocked stranger sitting on her couch. The locksmith arrived and I let her return to her drawing.
The locksmith is a young ginger, with a heavy toolbag on something called a “Magna Cart.” He tries to pick my lock, but it is very old and the pins are dry. He tries to lubricate it with a can of WD-40 from his bag, but realizes it is empty. He fails to pick the lock, and tells me he needs to drill the lock out if I’m going to get back in. “Sometimes you can pick ‘em all, sometimes you can’t pick yer nose,” he tells me. He uses a very thin drill bit in his power drill. The knob doesn’t turn. This is because the drill bit is now broken off inside the lock. He uses a drill bit five times thicker to drill the rest of the lock, and now drill bit, out. My door opens. I give him $175. This is a discounted rate.
He tells me he could sell me a lock, but they are all commercial grade and will cost me over $100. He says I should go to Home Depot instead. It is 9:00 p.m. so I hurry to the local Home Depot and buy a new doorknob for $10. I return home, disassemble my door and install the new lock.
If I could give any advice from this experience, it would be that you should not lock yourself out of your apartment. The plant was no help during any of this, so don’t rely on one of those either.