The Lock-Out Blog

If this were a proper lock-out blog, it would have been written while I was actually locked out of my apartment on Tuesday night. Of course that means I would have had to write it on my cell phone somehow, and, seeing as I don't have a Crackberry or any sort of high-tech CIA-issue tracking device variety of phone, this would have been a frightening endeavor.

I could have written it immediately after breaking in to the apartment, but it was, by that time, 3:15 am, and even this night owl needed some shut-eye.

The irony in all this (I think, anyway, as the true meaning of irony has always eluded me), is that i had my keys. My room mate and I spent a good half an hour banging on our own door after bending my key in the deadbolt lock. It wouldn't budge. We tried to MacGyver our way in, too, with a barrette but mostly wound up embarrassing ourselves. Eventually we called a locksmith who took a power drill the the cylinder and woke up our neighbors. They were not pleased. One of them is a scary feminazi who listens to Ani Difranco on vinyl (you can learn a lot of things simply by looking at a person's mail) and does not mince words. I made them cookies. That is how we deal with things where I come from.

So, who is to blame? Us or the landlady? After a shouting match with said landlady over the phone my room mate and I were too frazzled to think straight. All four of our parents told us to ask around and to stop freaking out. Apparently in NYC the landlord is only responsible for putting a regular lock on the door - like the one in the doorknob. The deadbolt lock, or any other locks, are the responsibility of the tenant to maintain. The landlady came over yesterday afternoon and hugged it out with my room mate who gave her the rest of my cookies. We're splitting the locksmith's charges ($255) three ways, which is better than footing the bill ourselves, but not as great as being reimbursed.

So, friends. Got any good lock out stories? The only one I have that beats this one is December 6, 2003. It was my 21st birthday, and had had a glass of cheap champagne, two bottles of Mike's Hard Lemonade, and a Coors Lite. As a total lightweight, this rendered me totally drunk. My friends locked me out of my room for pranking purposes, then forgot to unlatch the lock before shutting the door and running away. I had to call a campus safety officer for a lockout, wearing a vintage 1980s evening gown (it was Festivus, as well, par-tay), and, of course, he asked me to sign a lockout form. I still have it, as a marker of the night I couldn't sign my own name.