"Stories About My Life," part 4: Adventures in Locksmithing

While P:S is in editing mode, I thought I'd write up a few stories about my life.  These are things that I have wanted to talk about, but haven't really been able to because P:S is written mostly from the perspective of my seventeen-year-old self.

Today's story was also prompted by some rando post:

I have a similar tale from my own stint as a locksmith.  Enjoy!




I have a lot of mixed feelings about my time at Bigtime Smallminds Locksmiths.  On the one hand, the owners were staunch conservatives and virulent racists who pressured me into routinely breaking labor laws as a condition of my employment (this last was no great hardship, just a little unpaid OT here and there, but it still carried the stress of knowing I was engaging in illegal activity while my fingerprints were on file with every law enforcement agency in the state).  But on the other hand, every day was full of eye-opening learning experiences, gut-busting laughs, and bizarre surprises.  So it's a mixed bag, but it's still a bag I kinda-sorta want to pee on.

I have a history of getting into places I'm not supposed to be and not getting caught.  My luck being what it is, the times I do get "caught," I haven't actually done anything wrong and it's a mere hassle.  On reflection, "annoying hassles over little things but no trouble for the big things" is actually tremendously lucky, but in the most frustrating possible way.  So getting fingerprinted for my apprenticeship at Bigtime Smallminds was actually a wake-up call to put an end to that habit, because if anything were to go wrong in some place I'd happened to get into, I'd be near the top of a short list and in mostly bad company.

I have been privileged to have a number of character- and confidence-building experiences that tend toward the legendary:  I've bushwhacked through the mountains of Colorado, which taught me how to never feel lost; I've eaten a scorpion, which taught me that I can pull insane stunts and only suffer mild consequences; I've trained with actual not-fucking-around ninjas, which taught me that I'm very good at fighting but there is always someone better (and I might not know it to look at them); I've been in a documentary on an award-winning peer-tutoring program, which taught me that I'm a naturally gifted educator and cemented my passion for teaching; I've guided kindergarteners through hand-wiring their own electronic musical instruments, which taught me that almost anyone can do almost anything with the right teacher and environment; I've cut down a tree with a flagstone (the tree was only about as thick as my arm so NBD), which taught me that primitive solutions are still solutions; and the time I spent at Bigtime Smallminds taught me to be resourceful in any situation.

Everyone's locked their keys in their car, and everyone has a story about it.  I once broke into my own car with a rock, because I was locked out of both my car and my apartment in the middle of the night.  I correctly reasoned that calling for assistance in the wee hours would probably be expensive (and my phone was in my apartment anyway so WtF), but I foolishly thought that a piece of glass ought to be pretty cheap (because it's just fkn glass, amirite).  BOY, WAS THAT AN EXPENSIVE MISTAKE.  This is in line with my best friend DJ's assessment that I'm the smartest person he's ever met - and he's a doctor, which means he's met lots of doctors - but I have the most profound lack of common sense he's ever seen.  Another way to put it is that I'm the kind of person who learns well from experience:  by making every single mistake exactly once.

I have since been locked out of my current car on several occasions, and it's never cost me a dime.  The first time with my current car was when I took it to my mechanic for its first oil change.  I didn't have a spare key because I bought it used and the previous owner had lost it.  When the mechanic called me over the phone to let me know the job was done, I told him I couldn't pick it up until late.  He said he'd leave the keys under the mat, and my smart-brain dumb-ass thought he meant under the welcome mat outside the front door of the shop. Like I said:  every single mistake, exactly once.  This was last year.  It also happens to be the very first time in my life I've ever picked up my car from the shop after hours.  My girlfriend, Lady M, had driven me out there and once I realized my mistake, she was like, "OK, what do we do now?"

I'm not going to tell you how to defeat the lock of a car - you can look it up on your own, I'm just not telling you - but I will say I found one thing I needed in her trunk and the other thing I needed on a junk pile out back of the car shop, and she described what I did as "the most bad-ass thing I've ever seen."  (She may or may not have lived a boring life before she got with me.  Either that, or she just really wanted in my pants that night.)

Another time I left my keys on the center console while I was packing up in my mom's driveway, because I'd be right back out with my last bag, and then I locked the door out of force of habit.  Then I immediately winced and cursed.  Then I took a deep breath, looked around the garage, and unlocked my car with a screwdriver and a fishing pole within two minutes.  I grabbed my keys while singing the chorus to Jerk It Out.

This is all background, and as with most things I do, it serves a dual purpose:  first, to establish that I don't have a leg to stand on in relation to the story I'm about to tell; and second, I only seem like an unbalanced character until you realize how many goddamn critical failures I roll all the Hell-ass time.

One day at Bigtime Smallminds, our tech came back from a lockout call with the most bewildered look of amusement I had ever seen that did not involve mind-altering substances.  He puts his stuff down and stares off into space, and the bookkeeper asks if everything's all right.  He looks at her and says, "Yeah, yeah, I just... I... wow."  I'll tell the rest of the story as he told it to us:

So I went out to the call.  Guy's locked out of his car.  He flags me down as I drive up, and he's telling me what a hurry he's in while I'm getting my stuff.  I tell him not to worry, I'll have him out in two shakes.  I take one look at the car, then look at him, then back to the car just to be sure.  I said, "Hey, are you sure you want me to open your vehicle for you?"  He said yeah, of course, that's why he called me.  I said, "OK, I just want to make sure you know that if I open this vehicle for you, it's gonna be fifty bucks."

He says, "Yeah, you told me over the phone.  We talked ten minutes ago."

I say to the guy, "OK, I just want to be absolutely sure that you know - no matter what I do to get you in - it's gonna be fifty bucks."

He says, "Right.  You said that."

I said, "So are you one-hundred percent certain that you want me to open this vehicle for you?"

Now he's getting pissed, and he says all offended, "Yeah!  Of course that's what I want!  That's why I fuckin' called you!  Now will you open my fuckin' car already?  I got somewhere to be and I'm already late 'cuz of this!"

And I just... I just... I had to check one more time, so I looked at the car and said, "Can you see your keys inside the vehicle?  I just want you to double-check that you know they're in there for sure, and not anywhere outside."

Guy points to 'em and says, "They're right there on the seat!  Can't you see them?  Come on, you want me to write you the check first?  I'll do that!"

I say, "All right, you write the check and I'll let you in.  Sorry, I've just never seen this before."

So he writes the check and hands it over, and he says, "Will you open my car now?!"

I say, "Sure."  Then I reach in through the fully open window and flip the lock.  And he just kinda stares at me, and I say, "That'll be fifty bucks."