Had an interesting conundrum on Friday morning and haven’t been able to speak about it until now. I woke up feeling like I got a good night’s rest (probably because it stormed very heavy overnight and I sleep like a baby when the rain and wind is blowing)… prepared myself for the day and reached for my door a few minutes early to make a meeting for work. Except the deadbolt wouldn’t budge. I strongarmed the lock and nothing happened. Wouldn’t you know it, I had felt so good that morning that I hit the gym– even in the hurricane weather we were having– and decided to leave my phones in the car since I was just running in the house to change my clothes and cleanup a bit before work. So here I was, locked essentially, in my own home. No way to contact a soul. I don’t have Internet in my house, I live on the second story so I couldn’t climb out and this was the only way out. I pleaded with the door… it wasn’t giving up. So I opened a window and tried to call out to someone… it was blowing so hard and pouring rain so heavily (literally, we were in the midst of hurricane weather)… no one could hear my cries– by this time, I really was crying– I’m a claustrophobe in a big way. I went back to the door and started banging on it and throwing my whole body weight into the door… nothing. Imagine what that felt like. Every attempt was worthless. Then an idea came to mind as a tarnished brass screw holding that deadbolt in place gave me little glisten. I swung open the cabinet doors under the sink and reached for the toolbag.. and I think at this point had the deadbolt been able to see what was happening, it would have been trembling itself loose. But it didn’t. So I grabbed the philips screwdriver and started to twist away. As I loosened the bolts, I had little care for where they ended up and let everyone of them hit the ground and bounce around. I had little thought about putting the pieces back together, I just wanted out… NOW! Once the bolts were out, the inside plate of the deadbolt fell off and I was faced with another dilemma. The locking mechanism for the deadbolt was wedged in the door good. I took a hammer and praying for good aim, I swung at the lock inside. Nothing happened… so I swung again, and again and again. Even thought the deadbolt wasn’t moving much, I earned a very high score in marksmanship!– it helped that I have a background in building things. Seeing that my efforts weren’t getting far, I took the screwdriver back out and plucked around on the inside of that lock trying to jiggle something loose… then I just resorted to stabbing the lock out of the hole… with everything I had in me, I bludgeoned the deadbolt until it finally gave way and fell out… it was a very weak ending for the lock, but for me I swung that door wide open in triumph! 45 minutes later. I stared at the mess. And at that point, I didn’t care if my door ever got locked again. But the reality was that I did care a little about coming home to an empty house. So for the sake of my belongings (not the door though), I carefully propped the deadbolt face plate back up into the empty hole and walked away a free woman.

Today, the dismantled lock is restored to its original position, by the way… well, kind of. The inside knob that I turn to lock the door is very loose and falls out everytime I reach for it… but when tightened, won’t accept my key on the other side. I’d rather deal with a loose knob than a lock that won’t budge, so there.