The Locksmith

As luck would have it, Micah has become very, very interested in locks and keys. We frequently catch him with the keys to the front door, sometimes trying to get them in the key hole, sometimes just wandering around aimlessly. Also, he's gotten into the habit of locking doors in the apartment. Since they all (except the front door) have a "push lock" on the inside, he can simply push it in, close the door, and admire his handiwork.

Our apartment is set up to be rented out by the room, so every room (including the kitchen) has a lock on it. All the keys to the separate rooms are kept in a locked desk drawer, and the key to the desk drawer is kept in a little organizer that sits on a table near the desk.

I'm sure you can tell where this is heading.

Last Wednesday night Micah got his hands on the desk keys and wandered into the kitchen where he left them on the floor. When leaving the kitchen, he politely pushed the lock and closed the door. So there we were, desk key locked in the kitchen, kitchen key locked in the desk. Great.

I assumed I could get one of them open, or at least fish the desk keys under the kitchen door with a coat hanger. As fate would have it, the kitchen door is the only thing in the entire apartment (which, by the way, costs $2400 per month) that's plumb, level, and installed with proper tolerances. I couldn't even get a piece of paper between the door and the frame or the floor, much less a credit card or coat hanger.

Next option was to pick one of the locks. Office furniture locks (besides high end Steelcase or HM) are usually pretty cheap, and I've had good luck in the past so I figured I would start there. Of course I wasn't surprised one bit that the desk had a FIVE tumbler lock on it - that's the same as most residential deadbolts. No way was I going to get that with half a bobby-pin and a screwdriver.

The door was the same story - a miserable failure.

So we (Luanne) had to call the owners. After a series of obnoxious visits from their maid, they finally came up and told us there were no other keys, and they'd call a locksmith in the morning.

The "locksmith" showed up at 10:00am. He had a pliers, a screwdriver, and a big ring of what I can only describe as skeleton keys. It's entirely possible that someone told him we had a treasure chest we couldn't get open, but we'll never know.

After a few minutes we finally got the whole double-lockout situation explained to him. It was like a game of charades with all kinds of pointing and grand gestures. We've gotten pretty good at it, and even manage to waggle our heads every once in a while. Now fully on board, the locksmith had some sort of verbal exchange with our maid, and she went downstairs to get the owners, who in turn had another verbal exchange with him.

I'm pretty sure the conversation went something like:

Locksmith - "I can get this drawer open, but it'll never be the same."

Owner - "Whatever."

Using his pliers as a hammer and his screwdriver as a chisel, he hacked away at the drawer until the divider could be forced up enough to free the lock. Magnificent.

He grabbed the keys, unlocked the kitchen, gave us a "tada" look, pinched the kids' cheeks, and walked out the door. For him, mission accomplished. For us, just another day.