Houdini Could Make a Fortune Teaching Seminars To People Like Me
Posted by Moose on June 2nd, 2009. Filed under: Adventures.Needing three separate keys to get into your house is generally a good thing – especially when you live at street level in a neighborhood that’s part hipster, part dodge-the-mace. But it abruptly ceases to be a good thing when you shut the door behind you and realize you only have two keys.
It was 9:30 on Saturday morning and I was about to go running. I had no money, no phone, hadn’t eaten breakfast, and was in possession of only two-thirds of the keys I needed to access any of these things before I died a wretched, mewling death in the gutter, staring forlornly into the window of my former home.
Before I did that though, I decided to try my landlady. I rang her bell, praying fervently that she hadn’t decided to skip off to Maui for the weekend or otherwise inconvenience me in some selfish quest for enjoyment. No answer. Predictably, my brain started spinning with thoughts of the dinner party later that evening and how on earth I was supposed to provide mac and cheese WHEN I COULDN’T GET INTO MY KITCHEN. I would have to sit on my steps all day before trudging to the party empty-handed, covered in the dried perspiration of a run ten hours previous, wearing some decidedly elastic-challenged yoga pants.
My choices: 1. Wig out 2. Go for my run and assume everything would be fine. I’m proud to say I chose option two. I ran my (admittedly very short) jogging circuit and headed back, confident my landlady would be home again and simply thrilled to answer her door.
She wasn’t. New options: 1. Wig out 2. Wait it out 3. Pound on my neighbors’ doors.
Now, I don’t like to disturb people – this is why I rarely use my phone. Telephones ring! Loudly! How jarring to someone’s serenity! So I was mighty uncomfortable at the thought of ringing the doorbells of people I wouldn’t know if I passed them on the street.
So I went back to my stoop, a stoop I was beginning to think of fondly as my new home, and waited for awhile. As I waited and my landlady remained stubbornly absent, I remembered a conversation at work. For reasons still unknown, a coworker decided to give me an editorial on my character. On his list was “mousy.” I was offended. If I’m sometimes meek at work, I’m often fiesty outside work AND THAT JUST MAKES ME COMPLEX, THANK YOU.
Then I realized I was sitting on my stoop BEING MOUSY. It was a bit of a revelation, I don’t mind telling you. So I popped up and started pounding on all my neighbors’ doors. I remained proud of my chutzpah for precisely two minutes until I realized that no one was answering. So I sat back down on my stoop (hello, stoop! How I missed you!), resigned to wait until someone appeared or I managed to vaporize through my walls.
A minute or two later, the door opened. My entrance is separate and there’s a bush of red flowers between my door and the main door. So I jumped up and threw myself across the divide, yelling “Hi!” just as he turned around to go back inside.
Imagine being woken up by your bell and wandering down the stairs, only to have some unfamiliar, un-showered woman jump out of the bushes at you, hair flying and arms flapping. Yeah. The poor man was terrified. But he let me through to the backyard so I could get back in my house, rinse off the sweat, and start my day.
The menacing bush, behind which I lurked. Menacingly.
To the guy at work who called me mousy: Thanks, dude! You saved me untold hours of waiting timidly on my front step. You also scared the hell out of my upstairs neighbor.
Part Two of Saturday’s Locked Out Saga
Why, yes. There IS a part two. Consider that foreshadowing.
Clean, fed, and happily relieved of the burden of living the rest of my life in gutter-bound squalor, I sailed valiantly through my day, stocking up on cheese and preparing the comfort food of the gods. After hastily throwing on some Dinner Party Goin’ Clothes, I pulled up in front of their building to unload. I handed out the first armful and hopped out to carry the last of it to the stoop (what IS it with me and stoops?) – and unwittingly closed the car door.
My car doesn’t have automatic locks, and this is San Francisco. Where if your car is unlocked, someone’s bound to crawl in and take a little nap in your back seat. Maybe with a slurpee cup full of moonshine and a cut-rate hooker. So I click down my locks without even thinking about it every time I shut the door.
Did I mention that I was double parked on a busy street and the car was running?
I’d like to take this opportunity to proclaim my belief that it’s every human being’s lot in life to occasionally do something really, really dumb. THIS WAS MY MOMENT.
Doing my patented crazed squirrel impression, I looked frantically up and down the street for a miracle and maybe a really big glass of brandy. Meanwhile, Scott called Triple A. As I realized my only options were putting my foot through the passenger seat window (and forget about the brandy), Scott calmly closed his phone and said, “They’ll be here in 10 minutes.” Oh. Well. How handy. So we stood around chatting until Triple A rescued my ass, and then we all went inside where I poured myself a big glass of wine. The end.
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June 2nd, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Amen!
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Oh how many days have I had like this?
We’re going to get on GRANDLY!
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Oh, Lord. I can’t believe there was a part 2 to the lockout story! I have never locked myself out of my car while it was running, but I have locked myself out of many an apartment. In fact, I am quite adept at squeezing myself through windows that no human being was ever intended to fit through. And, um, at accidentally putting my fist through said windows while trying to open them when they’re jammed
June 2nd, 2009 at 9:24 pm
How you can live through this day and come back here to entertain us with your story is beyond me
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:02 pm
I’m soooo glad I’m not the only girl who does this kind of stuff. Love it.
Sorry you had such a bad day
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
And yet you soldier on, you trouper you! I made the terrible mistake of giving my brother-in-law my car for shuttling folks around the weekend I got married and he managed to:
A) lock the keys inside, with it running, in a parking garage in downtown Denver. Right before the rehearsal dinner.
B) ride off with someone else after the wedding, MY key ring still firmly in HIS pocket. While the spare keys got us home, they failed to magically produce a house key. (Damn!) Seeing as our pre-teen dog sitter had apparently gotten scared that evening in the house and had locked every door and window she could reach before leaving, I spent quite a bit of time standing on the front porch in my wedding dress (at god-knows-what in the morning) while my husband broke into our house. And there wasn’t even a big glass of wine at the end.
June 3rd, 2009 at 3:43 am
Holy cow! I would have utilized option one – wig out. And then I would have done what you did. That is definitely something that would happen to me.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:26 am
A few days ago, you wrote about listening to a stranger talk and vent. That story, and this one, are a perfect example of karma. You gave to the universe, and the universe giveth back to you.
That kind of optimism goes well with morning coffee, I must say.
June 3rd, 2009 at 8:20 am
Dang gena! Talk about Bad Luck Saturday!
I’m so glad it all worked itself out…now, for that Mac & Cheese….
xox
June 4th, 2009 at 9:09 am
My friend did the exact same thing with the car and the keys etc… He’ll be so pleased to know he’s not the only one!
It sounds like you seriously deserved that wine and the mac and cheese.
June 4th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
This winter I was up working on my computer (around 2 or 3 am) and there was a sharp noise against the window that was so loud I thought perhaps the window had been broken. I grabbed my phone and was about to call 911 when I heard it again, but softer, so I turned out my lights and peeked out the curtain… some guy was throwing pebbles at my window. He tried to tell me he had been outside walking his dog and got locked out… and would I let him in? I’d never seen him before, but he sounded so pathetic so I went downstairs to the front door. I almost didn’t let him in because he didn’t have a dog with him and he gave some half-assed excuse about how the dog was already in his apartment (it was). I never got the whole story about how he ended up outside and his dog was inside (with the keys). So I guess it’s a good idea to meet your neighbors.
June 5th, 2009 at 11:34 am
My first apartment in the ghetto in San Jose, I locked myself out. On the night I was cleaning it out because I had moved out of it the prior weekend. So I was cleaning everything up and thought, I should take my keys off the keychain because they told me to leave the keys on the kitchen counter. I decided to take all the trash out to the dumpster before grabbing my purse and leaving. So then I left the keys, grabbed the garbage to take out and locked the front door.
It was about 8 PM so I didn’t know what to do. No neighbors could help, so I tried the windows. I pushed the living room window open so hard I broke it. And then when I climbed in through the window, I slashed my leg so bad I probably needed stitches.
So I got in, tied my robe around my leg to stop the bleeding, then I grabbed the rest of my belongings and left and let them assume someone broke in. Since it was East San Jose. And then never charged me for it. And I still have a scar on my knee, 10 years later.
June 5th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Wow, amazing how we all do these things! I am actually obsessive about ensuring I have my car keys in my hand before closing all the car doors. Obsessive. I have a reputation for it because I will check my handbag 7 times in a row to ensure I have the damn keys in there before I’ll close the doors and then I’ll still be unable to close the door till I am physically holding them in my hand. You know, to make sure I really have them.
I don’t know where that paranoia came from, but it clearly serves me well because it went flying out the window on the day that I had a job interview. I was in a massive rush, was already late for the interview but couldn’t find a parking spot. When I finally nabbed one, I was in such a rush that I just grabbed my handbag, locked & shut the car doors and took off running. For about 10 paces. At which point I realized the ignition was still running and my car keys were locked inside the car. So I showed up at the interview late, out of breath, stressed, on the phone with my sister who was trying to find someone to take care of this for me while I was at the interview (so I told the interviewer to hang on a second when I first showed up because I was on an important call that couldn’t wait), and I’m pretty sure my brain failed to show up until about 10 minutes into the interview. I also neglected to turn my phone off when I got off the phone, so it rang during my interview. AWESOME.
Somehow I got the job though. God knows what they were thinking.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
How did I miss this post?! Perhaps because I was selfishly preparing to go gallavanting around Europe as you typed.
Yes, that was a stressful day for you, dear Moose, I will concur.