Locked Out

Have you ever had to dig a ladder out of a few feet of snow while wearing Mary Jane-style canvas shoes? Without a hat or mittens? With an antsy dog in tow?

Have you ever had to lug the ladder (your feet now completely wet) across a yard of
thick, heavy snow and place it under a window much too tall for you to reach?

Have you ever had to punch the daylights out of a screen with your sensitive piano hands so that you could access the only unlocked window through which you could crawl?

Have you ever had to then hop into the window head first, your wet feet and bruised fist tumbling after?

Last weekend, I dog-sat and house-sat for some very dear friends of mine. Characteristically, I also had a thousand other things going on. I didn't really have the time or energy to deal with anything unforeseen.

(Of course, being phenomenally busy is precisely when something unforeseen occurs.)

I rushed to the house to let the dog out the first day. I was frantic--I was not wearing a hat or mittens and had hardly buttoned my coat. I unlocked the door, grabbed the anxious dog, put on his leash, led him outside and let him do his thing as I shivered in the icy wind.

(What I had forgotten in all of my haste was that the door to this house locks on its own, whether or not one remembers to take along her keys, and whether or not she is clothed in proper winter attire.)

After the dog had relieved himself, I led him back to the house, only to find that the door, indeed, was locked. There I was, in subzero temperatures, locked out with a mildly recalcitrant dog, no mittens or hat, and a completely inefficient pair of shoes. Nor could I take my car--my keys were inside the house to which I couldn't gain access.

The last thing the dog/home-owners had said to me before they left was, "We will be unreachable by phone."

In the end, by some lucky fluke of necessity, I was actually able to reach them by phone. It was the family patriarch who talked me through Macgyvering my way into their locked house. "Now, Liz, here's what you're going to do. You're going to dig the ladder out of the snowbank and then you're going to punch out the screen of the elevated window."

Being a good listener and a vigilant follower of directions, I did all of this, step-by-step, and successfully found myself standing in the kitchen of the house, busted screen at my heels, soaking wet pant legs dripping onto the wood floor.

One would think that this would be enough to deter me from leaving my keys inside the self-locking door ever again. Not so.

The very next day, I repeated the entire experience, minus punching out the screen.

The neighbor watched me silently lug the ladder to just outside the kitchen window. "Oh, I am the dogsitter," I assured him with a wave of my hand. "I'm not trying to break in or anything. I mean, I am trying to get inside, but don't worry. I'm not a burglar."

I don't know what burglars look like, but I'm sure they don't usually wear gigantic, brightly colored wool coats and mary janes while teetering on a ladder in full daylight and chatting up the neighbors.

The neighbor was amused. "I'll vouch for you if the cops come," he said. Then he marveled, "But you do look like you know what you're doing."

I shrugged, clumsily tottering atop the ladder in my plaid wool coat. I explained, honestly, "Oh, yes, I did this yesterday too."