I found myself locked inside of my apartment the other night.
I had only been home long enough to change clothes, order some wings from Wing
Stop and grab the overdue Redbox DVDs to return to Wal-Mart. I went through my
normal exit-the-house routine grabbing my keys, turning off the light in the
kitchen, and finally unlocking the door.
When I tried unlocking the deadbolt the handle of the lock turned but
the deadbolt scowled at me as if to say, “Where do you think you’re
going?” I tried twisting the lock a few
more times, but nothing. Luckily it was only about 5:30, so the main office in
my building was still open. Amy answered
with such enthusiasm, but when she heard me say, “I am locked inside of my
apartment!” Her tone quickly changed.
She paged our maintenance guy and he was there in less than ten
minutes. His suggestion was for me to
unscrew the deadbolt lock first and then he would attempt to remove the lock
from the other side. I only had the
flathead screwdriver (two notches) instead of the other one with the four grooves which
made the unscrewing process very tedious. Any who, I kept at it until I was
finally able to unscrew the lock.
Unfortunately for me the deadbolt still wouldn’t budge. The maintenance guy sent for another guy with
a drill to take his place. Bless his
heart. He worked diligently, but he didn’t speak very much English. After successfully removing the entire key
lock from the door, he peeped his head inside the bottom lock which was now
only a gaping hole and screamed, “Can you unlock?” So I peeped my head through
the same gaping hole and said, “No! It’s the deadbolt.” I gestured to the top
and finally he realized what I was saying.
He went back to work.
As he continued to drill and hammer away, I thought, “Okay,
God so what’s the lesson in this?” You know there’s always a reason for
everything. Since my Wing Stop and
Wal-Mart trip had been temporarily delayed I decided that I would at least make
use of my time at home. My first thought
was to work on the project schedule that my Portfolio Manager needed for Friday
or I could work on my vision board from 2012 which had been tucked away in my
guest room closet since this time last year. I had just left the office, so I
chose the vision board.
It’s amazing how unbelievably calm I was acting about the
entire thing. I kept telling myself,
“Everything happens for a reason. I’ll figure it out later on.” After ripping through a few back issues of TIME and US Weekly (I still don’t know how I ended up with that magazine),
the maintenance guy gave the door three loud and quick taps with his hammer and
BAM my door came flying open. I have
never been so happy to see the outside of my door! He quickly replaced the bottom lock in
silence giving me a new key. The both of
us gestured “thank you” and “you’re welcome”.
Next I was faced with another dilemma; lock the only lock
that remained or say a quick prayer of protection and leave the door unlocked.
I said a prayer and left the bottom lock unlocked just long enough for me to
grab my car keys, new house key, and the Redbox DVDs and again set out for
Wal-Mart. I did, however, lock the
door behind me. I would rather be locked out then locked in.
When I reached Wal-Mart I returned the Redbox DVDs and
picked up a few more. As I waited for
the DVDs to pop out like pop tarts from the side of the kiosks I noticed an
older gentleman kind of checking me out.
I gave him a quick nonchalant
smile and thought, “Yep, I still got it!”
Since I was abandoning the idea of having Wingstop for
dinner, I decided to grab one of those pop-in-the-microwave healthy dinner
meals.
I must have stood with the Lean Cuisine freezer door open
for over fifteen minutes trying to decide which one of the sometimes bland
meals I would select. If you’ve ever stood with one of those freezer doors open
you’d probably noticed that the glass fogs up after awhile. This is what happened to me. That is why I
could not see who was entering the aisle from the other end. Giving up completely, I shut the freezer door
and there he was, standing there between the T.G.I.F frozen dinners for two and
the Stouffers meals.
To be continued...
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