Earlier this week, I locked myself inside my house. (Yes, it’s possible).
Let me explain. I came home late Friday night, exhausted and having to pee. I almost skipped the deadbolt because I live in a pretty quiet neighborhood, but then I remembered a story that a friend told me recently about an episode of Criminal Minds. (And let me just take a moment to say that Criminal Minds fans are the most rabid fans ever…and most of them don’t live alone. And the only thing that Criminal Minds fans want to do is tell you about an episode of Criminal Minds, but I think they might have ulterior motives. Of course they want to tell you about their “favorite” show; they haven’t had a good night’s sleep since the first time they watched the show and now they spitefully want to ruin your circadian rhythm as well. Misery loves company after all). My friend recently told me about an episode where this cable guy would come to single women’s houses and scope the place out and unlock a window or steal a key before he left. Then he would come back in the middle of the night to rape, torture, and murder these poor girls. Since I had to call Piedmont Natural Gas lately to check out my enormous pilot light (that I of course thought smelled like a deadly and volatile gas leak of treacherous proportions) I decided to err on the side of safe and not-being-murdered and I locked the deadbolt behind me.
When I woke up bright and early Saturday morning ready to get to the local country club so I could help set up for the junior/senior prom, I couldn’t find my car keys anywhere. It wasn’t a big deal though because I have a valet key from the car dealership so I decided to just use that key since I knew I had an extra house key in my car. I would just find my keys later because I was already running late. It wasn’t until I tried to open my back door that I realized my predicament.
There was no way to unlock my backdoor deadbolt without finding my car keys. The extra house key in my car wouldn’t do me any good because I would need a key to get outside to get into my car…and in that case my original need for the key would be negated anyway. So I found myself locked inside my house.
As a highly distractible person that is a part-time idiot, I have definitely been locked out of my house a time or two…in the last few weeks. The feeling of being locked out is not new to me. It leaves me stranded, alone, and exposed. (I felt especially exposed the time I locked myself out when I was taking my trash to the dumpster in my pajamas and I had to walk barefoot to the local garage to borrow their phone. (That was also the day I realized it’s a good practice to memorize some of the numbers in your cell-phones in case of a semi-emergency such as this one). But at least when you are locked out, you don’t feel entirely trapped. You have options. You can call your landlord, a friend with an extra key, or if it’s a pretty day outside and you aren’t bra-less and in your pajamas, you can go for a walk!
But once I realized that I locked myself inside my house, I started to feel panicked and claustrophobia set in. Especially since the only place my cell phone really works is outside. All of the worse-case-scenarios started to run through my head. What if I was locked inside of my apartment for so long that I ran out of food and then I starved to death and died. What if it was weeks before anyone came looking for me and by the time they found me, I’d have to be identified by my dental records! Or what if it was even longer than that?!? And what if I had bought one of those Rumba vacuum cleaners while I was in college and had money to buy stupid stuff, and then it vacuumed up my decomposing body a little bit at a time?!? Then there would be no trace or my body and no one would ever know what happened!
In my panic I remembered that I had forgotten to brush my teeth. I decided to take a break from my mental breakdown and start my key-finding-campaign in earnest after freshening up a bit. When I opened up my medicine cabinet and saw my car keys sitting next to my deodorant, I was elated (and perplexed).
They looked like freedom! I grabbed them and held them close to my chest, and spun them around in a whirlwind of liberty and living to see another uncomfortable high school prom. I was so excited to be free of the shackles of my apartment, that I forgot to brush my teeth (stop judging) and I rushed out into the fresh morning air, breathing in its sovereignty in giant gulps. (I think I was just out of breath from running out to my parking lot).
No, I still have no idea why I put my keys in my medicine cabinet. But I did realize something important while I was driving to the country club, 30 minutes late, that would have made all the difference in my morning. The entire time I was pacing around my apartment looking for the keys to my back door and imagining my desiccated corpse being sucked up by an automatic vacuum cleaner that I don’t even have, my front door remained unlocked, completely open to the world with its Criminal Minds, my car, and the country club.
Yep. I’m an idiot.
Let me explain. I came home late Friday night, exhausted and having to pee. I almost skipped the deadbolt because I live in a pretty quiet neighborhood, but then I remembered a story that a friend told me recently about an episode of Criminal Minds. (And let me just take a moment to say that Criminal Minds fans are the most rabid fans ever…and most of them don’t live alone. And the only thing that Criminal Minds fans want to do is tell you about an episode of Criminal Minds, but I think they might have ulterior motives. Of course they want to tell you about their “favorite” show; they haven’t had a good night’s sleep since the first time they watched the show and now they spitefully want to ruin your circadian rhythm as well. Misery loves company after all). My friend recently told me about an episode where this cable guy would come to single women’s houses and scope the place out and unlock a window or steal a key before he left. Then he would come back in the middle of the night to rape, torture, and murder these poor girls. Since I had to call Piedmont Natural Gas lately to check out my enormous pilot light (that I of course thought smelled like a deadly and volatile gas leak of treacherous proportions) I decided to err on the side of safe and not-being-murdered and I locked the deadbolt behind me.
When I woke up bright and early Saturday morning ready to get to the local country club so I could help set up for the junior/senior prom, I couldn’t find my car keys anywhere. It wasn’t a big deal though because I have a valet key from the car dealership so I decided to just use that key since I knew I had an extra house key in my car. I would just find my keys later because I was already running late. It wasn’t until I tried to open my back door that I realized my predicament.
There was no way to unlock my backdoor deadbolt without finding my car keys. The extra house key in my car wouldn’t do me any good because I would need a key to get outside to get into my car…and in that case my original need for the key would be negated anyway. So I found myself locked inside my house.
As a highly distractible person that is a part-time idiot, I have definitely been locked out of my house a time or two…in the last few weeks. The feeling of being locked out is not new to me. It leaves me stranded, alone, and exposed. (I felt especially exposed the time I locked myself out when I was taking my trash to the dumpster in my pajamas and I had to walk barefoot to the local garage to borrow their phone. (That was also the day I realized it’s a good practice to memorize some of the numbers in your cell-phones in case of a semi-emergency such as this one). But at least when you are locked out, you don’t feel entirely trapped. You have options. You can call your landlord, a friend with an extra key, or if it’s a pretty day outside and you aren’t bra-less and in your pajamas, you can go for a walk!
But once I realized that I locked myself inside my house, I started to feel panicked and claustrophobia set in. Especially since the only place my cell phone really works is outside. All of the worse-case-scenarios started to run through my head. What if I was locked inside of my apartment for so long that I ran out of food and then I starved to death and died. What if it was weeks before anyone came looking for me and by the time they found me, I’d have to be identified by my dental records! Or what if it was even longer than that?!? And what if I had bought one of those Rumba vacuum cleaners while I was in college and had money to buy stupid stuff, and then it vacuumed up my decomposing body a little bit at a time?!? Then there would be no trace or my body and no one would ever know what happened!
In my panic I remembered that I had forgotten to brush my teeth. I decided to take a break from my mental breakdown and start my key-finding-campaign in earnest after freshening up a bit. When I opened up my medicine cabinet and saw my car keys sitting next to my deodorant, I was elated (and perplexed).
They looked like freedom! I grabbed them and held them close to my chest, and spun them around in a whirlwind of liberty and living to see another uncomfortable high school prom. I was so excited to be free of the shackles of my apartment, that I forgot to brush my teeth (stop judging) and I rushed out into the fresh morning air, breathing in its sovereignty in giant gulps. (I think I was just out of breath from running out to my parking lot).
No, I still have no idea why I put my keys in my medicine cabinet. But I did realize something important while I was driving to the country club, 30 minutes late, that would have made all the difference in my morning. The entire time I was pacing around my apartment looking for the keys to my back door and imagining my desiccated corpse being sucked up by an automatic vacuum cleaner that I don’t even have, my front door remained unlocked, completely open to the world with its Criminal Minds, my car, and the country club.
Yep. I’m an idiot.
Don't worry this sounds like something I would do. I loose my keys all the time and have locked them in the closet at school numerous times and have had to ask to borrow my coworkers keys so I can go search for them. My students know by now that if I start spinning in circles looking for something that I have lost my keys...again.
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