There were a total of four keys, as explained to me by the father of the family that sold us the house; two keys to the side door of the garage, and two keys to the front door. He gave me both keys to the garage, and one of the keys to the front door – he kept the second front door key so, after they moved everything Tuesday afternoon, they could lock up. Well, Tuesday proved to be a relatively ‘quick’ day. I had expected it to drag on forever as a side effect of the excitement of walking around in, for the very first time, my new home. However, the day went fast, as did Lisa’s, and we met up at our apartment. I even brought her a couple dozen roses so I could give her something ‘for the new house’. It was planned out to be a semi-romantic, fun night. We loaded up the larger car with a couple collapsible chairs and tables, some cleaning supplies, and some Taco Bell from the drive-through on the way there. Pulling up in our driveway, the giggling began. That was OUR driveway. We left everything in the car, and walked up to the front door. I gave Lisa the front door key, left the two keys to the garage in my pocket, and she unlocked and opened the front door – but didn’t step in. She laughed a little, I never stopped, and I picked her up. Right foot first for good-luck, I stepped into our new home, carrying my smiling wife, set her down, and then closed the front door behind me. There was jumping and kissing and hugging, followed by a mad dash to explore our home. The first thing we did was walk into our garage from the door in the kitchen. We stepped into the garage and the door to the kitchen, and the rest of the house, closed behind us. We stopped the giggling and looked at the closed door. It was locked. We looked at each other, then back to the door. We tried the door again and again. We tried it with the left had, and we tried it with the right. It was very well locked. “You still have those other keys,” Lisa said. “They’re for the side door of the garage, Loolee, not this door.” “But you have two of them.” “Yeah…” “So use one!” We were in our home for less than one minute, and we locked ourselves out. That sudden slap of confusion worked its magic on both of us because, well, we were both confused. The front door, the one I carried Lisa across, was locked because I locked it when we got in. Why did I do that? I’m still asking myself that very question, simply because I locked a completely empty house. What was I protecting? The paint I’m going to paint over? The nails in the wall I’m going to pull out? First things first, we checked our ‘inventory’. Lisa’s purse, and all her belongings, including a certain ‘key’, was on the kitchen table. I had a cel phone with a dying battery, my wallet, and the keys to the car. Thank G-d that proved to be enough. It’s kind of like Hanukkah in a way. You see, the Jews of old only had enough oil to burn to light the temple for one night, but it lasted for eight nights. My crappy cel phone’s battery power level thingy only had one bar, which usually means it’s going to die within an hour, but it lasted over two and a half hours. We called Dave and Adina, because we knew they would be home and they have a computer. We asked them to look up a locksmith near our home, one that would come in a hurry, and they did. While they were looking, they were crying – from laughing at us. The beauty of it is that the instant we locked ourselves out, we laughed and cried too. What better story to have, we both thought, of our first day here? Lisa wrote down the numbers of all the locksmiths they could find, and then called them all one by one until she reached someone that could get to us in an hour. While she was tackling that, I was slowly making my way around the outside of my house, trying to break in. By the time I got all the way around to where I started from – the car in the driveway – Lisa already reached a locksmith and we agreed it was time to eat the Taco Bell food that was going cold in the car. We sat, we ate, we laughed, and came up with all kinds of creative ideas of how to best decorate the garage – since that was all we could see. Dinner gone, funny show on the radio, Lisa and I talked about colors for walls, how to best schedule the help of our friends to move couches and whatnot, and where a dog would sleep should we get one. Finally the locksmith arrived and, after much toil and fiddling and prodding the keyhole of the door that leads from the garage to the kitchen – a simple ‘sliding-the-credit-card’ maneuver did the trick. Something I could have done. Hours ago. But now I used that credit card, the one that could have let me into my home for free, to pay someone $75 to do it for me. I can’t wait to see what happens when the toilet stops flushing. What am I going to do then? Shove my credit card in that? Shortly after we got back into our home, we took it all in again, but this time we made sure there were keys in our pockets. All in all, it was a funny little experience. I just bought a house, my first house, and within one minute of getting it, I locked myself out. I also came to fully appreciate my new home, for it is really friggin’ tough to break into. As I’ve been referring to it all day as I’ve told this story over and over, it’s fool-proof – fool-proof meaning that it was more than up to the task of keeping this fool out. That, my friends, is funny. |
