Ain't it a Mother

I figured that, for Mother's day, I'd invite my folks over and cook dinner for them. You know, kind of a good faith role reversing thank you: a meal for all the years of meals and laundry and money and time and who knows what other parental sacrifices else. Hungover and running late, by the time I ran out of the house to buy groceries, my folks had already started their drive. Unfortunately, when I ran out, I was missing a crucial component to my plans: keys. I'm usually very good about this, and being of the paranoid sort, I had never considered leaving a spare set outside. Dark Mistress Hawthorne has keys to my house, but she was halfway across the state, driving out to visit her injured father. Slim Jim, my friend/landlord has keys, but he lives hours away. I gave my parents a set as well, but by the time I called them about it, they were practically around the corner. And besides that, they don't remember me giving them a set anyway.

The most obvious way into the house would have been through the bathroom window, which I'd left open. Because I like my stuff, I keep all the ground floor windows locked. The bathroom window sits right above the porch roof, which wasn't too far off the ground, but far enough to make me nervous. I considered how I could climb up there: the stack of miscellaneous lawn chairs, the plastic bins 'o' plenty, perhaps the carpet roll in conjunction with the unassembled bed loft kit. Have I mentioned that though I live in an urban area, I have a back porch fitting of any cunnerman shack? Oh, I could go on: Two old grills: gas and charcoal. Two antique sleds. Two old air conditioners. Two electric weed trimmers. It's like my porch is an a Noah's Arc for garage sale items.

I did not suffer for lack of stackable items. It was just that the thought of hoisting my frame up on that pitched roof was too much for my dizzy hangover addled constitution, so I set about a safer method of entry.

Now, the principle behind picking locks is simple, and the practice of doing so is less difficult than it is time consuming and kind of boring. I suppose with proper tools and a bit more experience it would become a more efficient ordeal, but lock picking is definitely more about the ends than the means. Now, if you were to ask me about lock picking, or if we happened to be hanging out and the topic came up, I would probably come across sounding like a bit of an expert. This is because I know vaguely how locks work, and I'm a bit of an ass who likes to sound smarter than he is. In reality, I've successfully picked locks two and a half times. Two counts come from the old metal office desk I have in the home whose drawers were stuck shut after I moved. I figured the locks had somehow engaged themselves with all the bumping and tipping and what not. Using a thumbtack and a bent paper clip I successfully got both locks to spin. I then realized that the drawers weren't locked, they just got jammed somehow, and I had just picked my locks closed.

The half count comes from college, when my friend, Slim Jim actually, had explained to me how locks work and, in turn, how they could be picked. I was studying at the Humanities Center where they have old, nice, wooden desks. I got bored and saw there was a lock for the desk drawer right in front of me. Using, again, a thumb tack and a paper clip, I fidgeted with the thing until I got the lock to close. Luckily I had sense enough to have the drawer open at the time, because I was never able to pick the lock back open. To this day, if you try to close the drawer flush, it stops against that stuck lock tab.

But that was then, and I felt pretty confident in my ability to tackle this lock. All I needed was the proper tools. Unfortunately, I was far away from my office supplies, so I had to settle for whatever I could find in the junkyard of my porch. My first try involved an antique pair of scissors, some copper wire, and a metal tooth broken from a rake. Even though I was excited at how easy it was to use these black weathered scissors to cut and strip the copper wire, that method was fruitless. The wire proved to soft, no matter how I bent and twisted. My next try involved cutting a square of aluminum from a soda can, which I folded and pressed into a bar. This might have worked, but when I made them small enough to fit the lock, they were too weak and bent.

Finally my parents arrived. I had hoped to have dinner going by the time they got there and here I was, filthy, trying to break into my own house. We decided the bathroom window really was the way to go, but I could only get as far as standing on the trash can before I lost my nerve. Dad jumped up there easy, crawled inside, and unlocked the door.

Mom stayed behind as we went grocery shopping. He helped me pick out the ground beef, he picked out the cole slaw. He picked out the onion rolls that mom likes. By the time we got back, mom was there washing the last of my large pile plastic containers. I hate washing those, and I had a few month collection stacked in one half of the sink. I yelled at her for it, but she said she just couldn't stand it.

Dad made cocktails, showed me his hamburger making technique while mom made the instant pasta salad. It all turned out delicious, even if it wasn't really the reversal I'd planned. It wasn't the fancy dinner I had in mind from the start, it wasn't ready by the time they got there, they ended up doing most of the work, and that was after they came to the rescue and got me into my own damn house. We all had a good time though, and at least I got this dumb blog post out of it.