It has come to my attention that the Baron Fig Lock & Key set is no longer available. While the “Lock” notebook is still available, the brass “Key” pen is sold out. So…
I thought I might be a generous soul and give my set away to one lucky reader. The set has been opened for review but has not been used. You will receive the box, all paperwork and packaging as shown in the review.
TO ENTER:
All you have to do is tell me a “I got locked out” story. I’ll pick one winner from entries who PLAYED BY THE RULES in this giveaway. Let’s do this!
FINE PRINT: All entries must be submitted by 10pm CST on Wednesday, March 28, 2018. All entries must be submitted at wellappointeddesk.com, not Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook, okay? Winner will be announced on Thursday. Winner will be selected by random number generator from entries that played by the rules (see above). Please include your actual email address in the comment form so that I can contact you if you win. I will not save email addresses or sell them to anyone — pinky swear. If winner does not respond within 7 days, I will draw a new giveaway winner. Shipping via USPS first class is covered. Additional shipping options or insurance will have to be paid by the winner. We are generous but we’re not made of money. US and APO/AFO only, sorry.
I’m a college student. The worst time i have ever been locked out was when i left my key across campus in a lecture hall. I didn’t realize this until after the hall was locked so I stayed the night at one of the library’s study carols.
About two weeks ago, I left the house, planning on just ‘getting out of the house’ to knit at a coffee shop.
Once I got in my car, I realized that my keys? They were not on my person. I had left them in the house. That I locked.
I got to sit in my car, frogging parts of a lace shawl while waiting for someone to get home. Then had to wait while my teen danced in a car.
I drive to a bus stop each day, park and get on the bus to go downtown for work. I usually put my keys in my backpack, but that day I put my car keys in my jacket pocket. Well, it was a beautiful sunny day when I left the office, and I left my jacket at the office. With the keys.
I had to wait until someone could come get me from the bus stop. 🙁 And then someone to take me to the bus stop the next day so I could get on the bus and go to work.
Now I check for my car keys every afternoon before I get on the bus.
Every New Year’s Day my family takes a walk up a disused fire road at a nearby state park. One year, all five of us got home from said walk and came to the realization that nobody had taken their keys with them and either hadn’t known or had assumed that someone else had theirs. We were standing outside in January for a while until some family friends came by with a spare set.
In a hurry to get to a dentist appointment, I ran out of the house and out to the car in the garage. As the house door closed, I realized I had left my keys in the house. Had to sit in the garage for two hours until my husband could come home from work to let me in. Missed dental apt and they charged me for not giving 24 hours notice.
Once when my daughter was a baby young enough to be carried in a bucket carseat, I went shopping with her. As I was putting her in the car, I rested the keys in the car seat with her for “safekeeping”. Forgetting the keys were in the seat, I closed the door. Immediately realizing I forgot the keys, I saw her hold the set up with her chubby baby hands… and she clicked the button, locking the car doors before I could get in! I felt a chill of panic go up my spine and I cheerfully said, “Again! Push the button again sweetie!” Nope. She threw the keys onto the floor of the car and laughed at me. NOT A FUN TIME FOR A GAME! My purse, including my phone, were on the seat next to her. EVERYTHING I had with me including my baby were locked in the car! The first three people I asked for help in the parking lot acted like I was insane and didn’t help me. Eventually a nice older woman got the security guard to call AAA for me, who came and saved the day! Thank goodness it wasn’t a hot day. I obviously never let my kids near the car keys again.
When I was in grade school, my older brother locked me out of the house on a very hot summer day (he had his girlfriend with him). He let me back in about a half hour before my parents got home from work, but I was thirsty, hot and needed to well….you know. The next day my girlfriends mother was going into town, so I asked for a ride and took the hidden key which my brother took the day before and put back, to the hardware store in town and had a new one made and hid it outside where no one else knew. He couldn’t lock me out anymore!
During our first year of marriage, my wife and I were getting ready to go out on our weekly date night. We were running late and rushing to go out to dinner together. As we were leaving our apartment, I asked my wife if we could take her car. She replied, “Sure.”
Right as I shut the door (which auto-locks), she yelled, “Wait!”
It was too late. She had left her keys inside the apartment. And I didn’t have mine with me either. We were locked out, unable to drive anywhere for our date night and unable to get back inside. We tried to reach our landlord, but kept getting his voicemail.
So we laughed things off wondering if we’d ever get back into our apartment that night. We resigned ourselves to walking around our neighborhood, enjoying the stars and asked one of our friends to come pick us up after it began getting too cold outside!
It turned out to be a memorable evening that I think was better than the date we had originally planned!
The very first time my dad let me drive his car by myself, a few weeks after I got my driver’s license, I drove it to my job at a drugstore and locked the keys in the car. It wasn’t a good start to my solo driving career.
My Lock Out Story: When I was young, growing up in DeKalb Ill, the Circus came to town! Well, not the circus, but it seemed like it. A large company rented an athletic field at the University in town. Then they fenced it off and started building all sorts of interesting things for a “show” they planed to put on for employees and guests. A very big deal. We were used to exploring the town and environs, and found the fence (and what was inside) irresistible to our curious minds. One evening, after the workers were gone home after a day of construction, we wandered around the fence peering in try to puzzle out what these partially erected things could be. We came to a gate, but it was paddle locked. We were locked out and wanted so much to explore. I took the lock in my hand and stared at it. It popped open. Startled the H*ll out of me.
I’d locked the keys in the car a few times while working as a retail merchandiser. One time the police came to unlock it for me, which drew stares when they arrived with flashing lights. So the next time it happened I stayed outside in the cold weather and waited for family to bring the key. Since then, I’ve never locked keys in a car (plus I carry the spare, duh).
All it took to create a hiding place for a key at our relatively new home was, well, a lockout. I was able to fetch a ladder thanks to the automatic garage door opener, and had left a screened window open on the second story of the house. This was a stepladder, however, that would only reach high enough for me to climb onto the roof that extended out over our off-the-kitchen breakfast nook. Struggling to not rip off rain gutters, I managed to get my 6′ 3″ frame up on that precariously small roof. From there it was a tippy-toe stretch over to the open window. Of course the releases for the screen are on the inside, not conveniently located on the outside for the locked-out soul. Not wanting to pay for a replacement screen, I carefully worked my fingers under the corner of the screen to create just enough room to extend my hand in to release one of the screen locks, along the sharp edge of the aluminum screen frame, of course. So with bloodied arm I valiantly released the second screen lock and held the now freed screen above my head like a gladiator champion. Now… do I swing a leg up there or hang like a primate by one arm to get my big self into the window opening? I opted for the less-treacherous arm approach. Fortunately it was my non-bloodied arm that got to do the initial hang onto the window sill as my feet said their farewell to the security they had found on that little roof. I was finally able to pull and shimmy my big old self through the opening. I’m just glad there were no neighbors around to witness the compromising positions and embarrassing episode. The extra key was hidden later that afternoon.
During the first week of college in my sophomore year, I got locked out of my dorm room. I only planned on quickly stepping to the lounge and back so I didn’t carry my key and had the door left open. But the window was also open and the wind slammed it shut behind me.
I was at work one Saturday and the only one there except for some field staff who were coming and going throughout the morning. I was taking something out to the dumpster and checked to make sure the door was unlocked so I could back in. However, when I tried to get back in I could not open the door. I started frantically banging on the door hoping someone was still there – no answer. My keys and phone were sitting helpfully on my desk inside. All of the businesses nearby were closed for the weekend.
As I was desperately trying not to panic and trying to think where on earth I could walk to and find a phone to try and call someone, the door opened. A screw in the door jamb had come loose, preventing the door from opening. My banging had jiggled it enough to get the (unlocked) door open again. Needless to say, I always take my keys and phone when I need to take out the trash now.
I’d just arrived at one of my first professional job interviews. I’d bought a suit, and a new silk blouse and even heels. Before getting out of the car, I traded my flip-flops for the new heels. I’d kept my suit jacket on a hanger in the back seat, so it would still be neat and tidy, and not rumpled from 2 hours in the car. My wallet was in my new professional looking tote bag. So I tossed my keys in there, too. Got out of the car, locked the door, went to open the back door to get my jacket, and swore.
I locked myself out of my car.
(This was all pre-cellphone, but if I’d had a phone, it would have gone into the pretty tote bag, too. Which sat on the passenger seat in my nice, locked car. )
I had to go to the receptionist & tell her my name and that I was here for an interview, and ask if she could she please call AAA.
I did the interview. Got interrupted by AAA coming to open my car with a slim jim (yay for old cars without power windows). I did not get the job.
I remember back on the last day of middle school for some reason I didn’t have my cell or my keys on me when I walked back home (I lived close to school), and was forced to wait an hour until one of my parents arrived. It was a real bummer.
I don’t remember getting locked out, actually…. but I vividly remember getting locked in. When I was maybe eight years old, I had an awful fight with my sister. Furious, I went into a roo that was used as an office, locked the door, went to the bookshelf and tossed the key behind some books. “Safe” from my sister, I sat and read a book. Of course, after I calmed down I couldn’t find the key any more. My parents knocked and tried their best to encourage me to search for the key, to no avail. What I remember next is my uncle, who as an engineer was handier than my more intellectual parents, opening the room window from outside. It was a second floor room, so he needed a ladder to get up there, and the blinds were closed, so he had used a screwdriver to remove them. He got into the room and saved me… but I can’t remember whether he found the key or just removed the door from its hinges.
My I got locked out story – I have the early report for work each day. This January, I drove to work in the middle of a snow storm only to realize that I’d left my work keys in another bag – at home – and had to drive back to get them. I only live 6 miles away, but it was a snow storm! Got back to the office and after letting myself in and settling at my desk, I realized that they’d closed the university for the day! Doh. Moral of the story – I always check my text messages before leaving home now.
My roommate had left for the weekend, the apartment office was closed, I didn’t know anyone in the building and I went to throw out the trash. Coming back, I tried to open the door and found out my keys were inside. I had to grab a soda can out of the recycle and use a push-pin from the bulletin board to take the top and bottom off the can. I then pried the flattened can in to the frame wedged the latch back in to the door.
Rock on MacGyver!
I hope this still counts as a “locked out story.” When I was teen I was really into the whole ska/punk scene ended meeting a trumpet player in Big D and the Kids Table. I went to one of their shows but it was 21+, so I got the attention of the guy I knew and he told me to go around back. I waited by the back entrance for a while until he popped and said “Sorry, no go.” I ended up just hanging out by the door anyway because I could hear the music.
Well, this is more like a “I locked myself out” story, but I suppose that they all are, right? At any rate, I was on a business trip to Kansas City getting ready to head to the airport to go home and I accidentally locked the keys to my rental car in the trunk. Crap! Of course the car was locked as well and my coat was in the car and it was about 50 degrees and the sun was going down. Luckily, I had my cell phone, but it was almost out of juice. So, I called the rental company. Turns out the car rental company was not able to help. One would think that they would want their car back, right? Not so much. So, I called a locksmith. I waited for 1/2 hour, called them back now with almost no power. They assured me that the guy was on his way. Now, it’s dark and I’m cold and afraid to leave the car and miss the locksmith and I’ve now missed my flight. …and I’m waiting. Another hour goes by – no locksmith. Another call, another promise … And now the next flight home is just and hour away. Another hour, another call – you get the idea. FINALLY, the guy shows up telling me that he had to stop at home to drive his kid to his piano lesson. Seriously? He should have told me that he had to take his pregnant wife to the hospital or something! I mean the guy works for a locksmith – isn’t being locked out of anything always an emergency? And then it took him about a minute and a half to open the car. Just barely made the last flight home. Needless to say I did not give the car rental agency a very high rating on Trip Advisor!
I left my dorm room in my pajamas last year and locked myself out of my room without my phone. My roommate was out of town and this was a Sunday morning so the community office was closed. I had to flag someone down to borrow a phone to call the RA on duty and get let back into my room.
Got locked out of my sister’s car…with my thumb stuck in the door! We had to wait an hour for someone to get there with the second set of keys, but luckily my thumb was just bruised so no real damage!
In junior high, I volunteered in the school library = nerd alert. The librarian locked her keys in the office and I happily picked the locked with the clip barrettes I wore every = secret juvenile delinquent.
A couple of years ago I was home sick, but decided a walk to the mailbox would be good for me. Wearing my pajamas, I walked the 200 feet or so to the mailbox, only to find it empty. Disappointed, I returned to the house…only to find it locked. Using a screwdriver scrounged from the shed, I managed to pry open a window I knew needed replacing. Wheezing and coughing, I climbed up a makeshift pile of things to climb through the window into the kitchen, where I promptly lay on the floor for a while and decided never to check the mail again! 😛
When my sister and I were younger, we were supposed to go grab some stuff from our van. We were pushing and shoving each other, and left the keys in the van when we locked, and closed it. We lived in a rural little town and it took quite some time for someone to come out and unlock the van. Our mum was not happy with us.
Western Nebraska in the summer with heat of 105 and I got out of my car to open a cattle gate to get to a prairie research site. Left the car running with the driver side door open. Car used to belong to a security company so it had the annoying “feature” that the doors would lock automatically if the car was running and any of the doors closed. Needless to say as I walked back to the car a wind gust closed the driver side door and I heard the dreaded “click” on all doors. This was long before cell phones and I was 20 miles from the nearest town which had 250 people in it. Walked a couple miles to the nearest farmhouse and the 80+ year old gentleman happened to have his nephew visiting who was a locksmith. He didn’t have anything with him but a ring of about 200 car master keys. Key number 150ish got the door open…right as the car ran out of gas and died. Hiked back to the house and borrowed enough gas to get back to “town” and called it a day! Came back the next day with a case of beer and a tube of Copenhagen as thanks.
Aside from the dozens of times I was locked out of my house as a child when I forgot my house key… the worst was probably recently when I lived in an apartment complex. The door could be locked, but still open from the inside and the buzzer rang. I left my apartment, got my mail then realized I had locked myself out of my apartment with no phone, no keys, and my husband several hours from getting home! Thankfully it was a) summer and nice out and b) the housing agent was at our complex. I was able to get a key and get back in my apartment, but if I had been but 10 minutes late, I would have spent the whole day outside with no way back in!
I got locked out of my car in high school once… thankfully my friend’s mom was a police officer! She popped her trunk and whipped out her mighty “slim jim” and unlocked my car door.
In my old house we had a slot on our front door for mail. I went on a walk with my dogs and accidentally locked us out of the house. So in my genius mind I thought that I could fish my arm through and up to the door knob to unlock the door. Well of course my sleeve bunched up funky and I got stuck. Nowhere even close to the doorknob. So I end up stuck on my knees all contorted with my arm in the door and my 2 dogs judging me. Thankfully I was able to unstick myself a few minutes later after the panic subsided. So we ended up going for another walk just to pass the time and hangin out in the front and back yard until my husband came home 3 hours later. He saw us outside and just laughed and shook his head, not suprised in the least that I had locked myself out. Now in our new house every time I leave to go anywhere I announce out loud that I have my keys and purse so I won’t forget them. I’ve found announcing it has helped me remember.
Hmmmm, I’m feeling locked out of this contest while I await March 298, 2018 to roll around ; )
Thanks for catching my typo!
Ok, great lock out story, just a little different. My mom and I need something for a project from Home Depot. It was a winter evening and already snowing but hey, we’re Amazon women with snow tires so what the heck. Whatever we needed must have been important, right? Anyway, entered the store , noticing there weren’t many cars in the parking lot, wonder why? we got into the store and looked around for half an hour. You know how it is, you want to look and touch all the neat stuff. We wandered around, found what we needed and went to check out. The register person asked us if we’d entered their “Our FLASH GIVEAWAY, drawn later that night”. She said they’d announced it in-store several hours ago but no one seemed to be shopping tonight because of the storm coming. We entered and asked “what storm?”. We’d been working on our project all day and hadn’t put on the news so were surprised to hear a Noreaster was bearing down on us imminently. Mom and I glanced outside to see BUCKETS of snow falling. Uh-oh. “Oh well”, the clerk said. “You have to wait for the giveaway anyway, it’s drawn in-store in half an hour. You have a great chance, we only have ten others who entered! “. We stood around for half an hour and everyone collected at the front for the BIG drawing. There were some great prizes, a $100 gift certificate, a beautiful rug, even a barbecue! They drew ten winners. You can guess it. YEP. TOTAL lock out! We got back in the car, losers, totally depressing, and crawled home. HOW can anyone be THAT unlucky? Hahaha. 11 people entered, there were 10 prizes. And NUTHIN. Let’s hope my luck has changed 25 years later! Have a great day and thank you for the opportunity to win such a great and generous prize.
Does it count when your husband locks you both out of the house? In Maine? In a major – we got two feet of snow – storm? And the cars key are also in the house? So not an awesome thing.
Haha! Thanks for the giveaway.
Alice
My most recent experience(s) of being locked out involves forgetting my badge at work. I get to wear the visitor badge of shame all day. Unfortunately, this has happened more than once in recent history!
My senior year of college, my girlfriend (now wife) had surgery right before the semester started. Recovery made the ordinarily easy walk from her apartment to campus very painful, so I was coming over to chauffeur every day. I was turning down her street and had to stop for a car coming the other way because her neighbors had parked on the street and two cars couldn’t pass. While I waited, a townie girl blew through the four-way stop behind me, hit the passenger side rear corner of my truck, turning the truck 45* while grinding the front end of her car across the length of my tailgate. All told, about $3000 in damage to the truck body and suspension, but still driveable until I took it in to the shop. When I knocked on my girlfriend’s door to call the police, she hadn’t heard or seen the accident and was furious because I was making her late to class!
So now I’ve got a damaged truck, an angry girlfriend, and my glasses are bent from the accident. Of course, I would end up locking my keys in my truck after class that night. I called AAA, and waited on a cold January night for them to show up. Finally the guy gets there and we do the paperwork.As he walks around to get started, he looks at the back end of the truck and says, “You know you’ve got some damage back here, right?” It’s possible I told him the whole story, in detail (with full orchestration and five part harmony), and ended with “So of course I know there’s damage back there!”. He just sort of looked at me and got to work on the door. When he was done, he said that his shop could do the work if the insurance was OK with it, and offered to buy me a beer at the townie bar off the square. Nice as that was, I decided not to try my luck any further and just went on home.
I wish I could tell you a locked out story, but I don’t ever remember being locked out. I always keep a key hidden outside.
I was rushing to get my rental car returned and catch my flight home from San Jose, CA to Dallas. I pulled into the car return area, popped the trunk, got out and promptly locked the car WITH THE KEYS IN IT! Luckily, the guy at the car rental was skilled at breaking into cars and got me to my flight with almost no delay.
When I was around 10 or so, my sister was selling Girl Scout cookies after school with my mom and mom picked her up from school and they went to the entryway of a big box store to sell the cookies. I rode the school bus home, and got home about an 45 minutes after school got out. I guess there was a miscommunication between my parents because my dad didn’t know that he was supposed to get me or unlock the door, so I waited in the cold for about an hour until he got home from work. It was in mid March here in Oklahoma and probably about 45 or 50 degrees with a bitter north wind. My dad felt so bad about the whole thing, far more than I did. He took me to visit my sister and mom and then took me to a restaurant for supper. I think I got a house key of my own after that and was required to keep it with me, if memory serves.
I’ve managed to lock myself out of my car several times. Fortunately, I pay the couple extra bucks for roadside assistance. Apparently a door wedge and a blood pressure cuff are really useful tools for opening car doors.
Thanks to the wonders of electronic keys, it is physically impossible for me to lock my keys in my current car. Which I have tested. Repeatedly.
Locked myself out of the house chasing after my little cat, who had darted out the doorway.
Picture it, a cold snowy New England morning. The wet, sloppy kind. The kind that sticks to the wipers in clumps. I pull safely to the curb and hop out, leaving the engine running to knock those pesky clumps off.
As I closed the door I thought maybe I had brushed the lock with my elbow. And there I was on the side of the road with my purse, phone and coffee nice and snug in my warm running vehicle in a town where the police don’t help in extricating you from these situations.
Long, long ago when I was in High School I was visiting a friend’s house. I stepped out onto the second story patio and he thought it was ridiculously funny to lock me out there. I wasn’t having that so to his terror I leapt off his balcony. Thankfully I had a rather rough and tumble childhood so I was familiar with how to land from high falls (I used to climb very tall trees too) so I knew to tuck into a roll when I hit the sloped ground waiting to catch me.
Thanks for the giveaway.
Most stressful lock out ever – I locked my keys in the car, with the car running, and my 9 month old in his car seat in the back of the car! Thankfully it was a cold rainy day, but I was still having a minor heart attack when I had to leave the car and run into the local craft store to call my husband. Immediately after that I went and purchased a cell phone. The 9 month old is now 19 years old and doing just fine!
Thanks for the give away. LOVE your blog!!
I was travelling and stopped at a Pizza Hut in a small town for the lunch buffet. I managed to lock my keys in my car, miles from home or anyone I knew. I borrowed a screwdriver from a friendly guy in a pickup truck, figured out how to take the tracks of my sunroof apart, and dropped in from above (in my younger days). I got rid of that car not long after since I figured out how easy it was to break into!
I lived in New York City for 20 years before moving to a quiet town in New England. One night, back in the city, a man tried to break into our house through our bedroom window as we were sleeping there. We awakened and frightened him away, but ever since that night my wife seems to have developed a home-invasion phobia, even out here in the sticks where we live now. If I go outside in to do yardwork and find that I need to retrieve an additional tool from the house, I find that I have been locked out. If I walk down to the corner store to buy a quart of milk I am locked out. Once a couple of summers ago I helped the neighbor recover her pet cat after it had been (fatally) hit by a passing car, pulling the carcass from the roadway and offering sympathy, all within view of our front-door window. When I try to go back inside to get a towel or two, locky locky.
I always carry my keys, even when I cut the grass. Always, always, always.
I really enjoyed your story!!
Ohh. Which one do I tell? One time I accidentally locked my self out when I ran outside to grab something quick one morning before work. I was in my PJs… the door shut behind me and the door handle lock was locked. And… it was raining. And 6am. I had given a neighbor a key. I walked over and knocked softly. My neighbor answered! Thank goodness. He was up early playing video games while his wife and kid were sleeping.
Here’s a doozy of a story. In college I drove to my friends apartment and we went to Walmart in her car. When I got back I realized not only was my car still running but the keys were locked in it. Being the sensible person who locks their keys in the car whilst still running I proceeded to call my dad who lived an hour and a half away asking him to help. He laughed a bit then said there was no way he was driving up to get my keys out of my running car after her had already given me a spare key that was also locked in the car. He told me to call a taxi company and they can unlock it for me but I was a poor college student who had no cash. He then sent money to my bank account to help me get my cars out of my still running car. Over 10 years later he still likes to tell this story.
I live in a condo with the laundry room across the hall
The door to my unit slammed locking me out, because of the nice summer breeze
I now only use the deadbolt to now avoid this
One summer years ago, I drove my kids to their robotics class, and we brought our dachshund Jessie along for the ride. We left her in the car with the air conditioning on while I walked the kids inside, and after I closed the car door, she happily ran to the driver’s side window and stepped on the door lock button, locking us out. Had to call AAA, but it ended happily for all.
Many moons ago, I was on vacation with two small children in Louisville, KY. It was a beautiful sunny day and I loaded the kids into the car to go to the Zoo. While I was strapping my squirmy 8 month old son into his car seat, I tossed the keys on the driver’s seat. My 3 year old daughter was busily messing with the buttons on the door. As I closed the door, I realized that she had managed to lock the doors. AGH! It all worked out. AAA is very speedy when there is a baby in a car and it’s sunny and hot.
At a previous job in Pennsylvania in a pharmaceutical company, I was occasionally the first person at work on days where I had to get in early to get one of our manufacturing processes started. We never closed because of weather so one morning after a snow/ice storm, I get to work to find the front door frozen shut. There was a 2 inch layer of ice along the ground preventing me from opening the front door, essentially locking me out! So I find the biggest rock I can in the field next to our parking lot and spend 10 minutes breaking apart the ice so I can open the door. I ended up ruining a pair of leather gloves but we were able to start the day on time!
In my old house, that I shared with. Roommate, I would be locked out so many times it became somewhat routine for me to climb back in through a window. My current house is second story only, so I have a hidden key.
Perhaps the most embarrassing though, was when I locked my keys in my vehicle at the laundromat. I called a friend, and described where the hidden key was, then walked her through my house where she tried to find my second set, whose location I did not recall. Oh, she found them, and I was able to get myself home with all my clean clothes, but how silly does that feel, and then to have an observer!
New York in the mid 80s, my first solo apartment: a sordid dark tenement illegal sublet, but all mine! Very exciting. My friend comes over to celebrate my first night in my new place, we go out to get pizza, come back to find that the police lock bar has somehow slipped out of place and is immovably holding the door closed. We had to get a neighbor to call a locksmith and in the end the door had to be taken off its hinges. Welcome to adult life!
I was staying at my parents’ house alone—I didn’t live there anymore and they were on vacation. I woke up early and realized I’d left my phone charger in my mom’s car in the garage. It was winter, and freezing, and I was wearing a nightgown. I went into the garage and then realized that I had locked the door from the house to the garage the night before—and I didn’t have a key. There WAS a key in a lockbox on the opposite side of the house, but I didn’t know the combination (and it was snowing… and I was wearing a nightgown…). BUT the car was unlocked. My mom had a stack of business cards in the center console. I put three business cards together and somehow used them to PICK THE LOCK?? I have no idea where this skill came from. I have never been able to do it again. I just slipped them into the crack in the door and kept wiggling until the door popped open??? It’s almost like I was given superhuman lock-picking skills because the universe felt so bad for me freezing my buns off in this nightgown. Not the only time I’ve ever locked myself out… But definitely the most interesting time.
a few years ago, i drove solo from pennsylvania to virginia. it was february and it snowed hard. half-way through the trip, i took a bathroom break at a rest stop in maryland. after taking care of things, i got back in the car and started to pull out car when i noticed the pile of garbage i had collected from snacks and things. i hopped out of the car to throw the garbage out. i didn’t want snow to get into the car, so i closed the door. as i exited the car, i must have clipped the lock because after i came back from tossing the garbage, the car was locked. and running. with my purse and cell phone inside. and the stereo blasting my favorite mixed-CD.
fortunately, there was a visitor’s center there and, after some convincing, they were kind enough to allow me to use their phone to call AAA who arrived an hour+ later after begged their dispatcher to come even though i couldn’t provide my member number because, yes, i was in the locked, running car in the parking lot.
the whole adventure added to my already long trip but i did make it home safe and sound.
In my home with some friends. It’s an older home with strange locks on the doors. One of my kids was fiddling with the door and it locked up. We couldn’t get it open and tried a number of different keys. Several friends and one of my children was locked inside. We eventually called the local fire department to come. They climbed in through the window and took off the lock. We have learnt not to try and use the locks on our doors after that…
2006, moving from Chicago to Japan and the day the movers come to pack up my apartment I go down to meet them and for the first time I lived in this place flip the lock somehow so that it locks behind me. I am now locked out, on a Sunday, and the movers are about to leave me and I fly out in a few days with no chance to reschedule. Thankfully the building maintenance guy lives down the hall and sees my panic sweat stricken face and makes me a deal. See, he wants my apartment because it’s bigger and there are none available. So, I agree to sign over my apartment to him and he unlocks my door.
I had only moved into my first (significantly not very) big real-estate purchase — a tiny condo in Florida — a few days earlier, when I came home from work to find that I had left the key to my new kingdom inside my castle. I called AAA — they don’t do home locks, but I figured they knew, and could refer me to, the trustworthy locksmiths in my new neighborhood. When the locksmith arrived, I was dismayed to find how easy it was to jimmy the lock on my door — she used a screwdriver and about 3 seconds to get it open, then demonstrated the alternative method of tripping the lock with a credit card. Yikes! I bought a new, better lock the next day!
One day I was on the early shift at work, which I am very much not used to, as soon as I stepped out of the lab where I work to go grab some coffee I remembered I didn’t unlock the door. I had to have some of the other guys from the manufacturing floor help me break into the other entrance (using a credit card) so that I could go around and get back in.
When I was a kid, I liked to help my mom do her Costco (then Price Club) shopping. When we were packing up the car, my mom put her purse with her keys in the passenger seat. I didn’t know, but of course my dad had trained me and my sisters to always lock the car doors. Well, I locked the keys in. Since this was pre-cell Phone era, my mom had to ask the guy collecting charge for a charity in front of the store for a quarter to call my dad at work who sent the keys with another colleague. It was already dark, and we had to wait for a while. Once we got the keys, my mom returned the quarter to the charity guy along with a $20 donation. I felt so guilty and ashamed, but my mom, who is about the sweetest person in the world, was so nice about it. It happens to all of us, she said. I’ve always been pretty careful about not locking myself after that. I know, not that interesting.
I kept a key to my house outside of my house because I had a tendency to lock myself out regularly. So I locked myself out, had the key to let myself in and then didn’t immediately put the key back outside. Two days later, I locked myself out again but with no backup. I had to climb in through the bathroom window, except we had done work to the house so the window was a little smaller and the configuration of the room inside was different. I ended up shoving myself through the window and then hanging upside down with my legs bracing me. I ended up sore and with a bruise that looked like Cuba down the entire length of my inner thigh. I have not locked myself out since.
I was locking up a store and drove to the night depository at the bank and locked myself out of the the car with the car running,I ran back to the store and got some wire to break into my running car.then I had to go to an employee party where everyone had to have me tell the story over and over.
1 time out of 10 when I walk the dog, I don’t grab the keys on my way out and my door locks automatically,
When I was about 12, I had a series of lock-outs . . . I couldn’t seem to leave the house without forgetting the key. One in particular though was during the summer. With school out, I spent the days enjoying the time off and decided to take an afternoon shower one particular day. As I was getting dressed, the doorbell rang. I hurriedly put on some of my clothes and ran down to see that it was the Fed-Ex guy. He delivered his package and was taking off when I ran out to meet him and closed the door behind me. He pointed to the package and took off. I, on the other hand, picked up the package and turned the door handle . . . only it didn’t move. I was locked out with no socks or shoes, and about half the rest of my clothes on. We lived in the country, so I had to traipse through alfalfa fields, cherry orchards, lots of orchard workers, and past our own cows to find a neighbor who was home with a phone to call my mom. After a little over an hour, my mom finally made it home to let me in (we lived about 40 minutes from her place of work). I think it was after that they got a key to hide outside.
I once locked myself out of my car when I accidentally threw my car key into a trash can. I didn’t realize it I had done it until I was set to leave work. Dumpster diving in the rain is less fun than it sounds.
Sometime back in the early 90’s I got to my desk at work around 6:00 AM and realized I didn’t have my keys. I went back out to my car and found I had locked them in the car. Then I tried to go back in the office and realized I had left my badge on my desk… locked out again. 🙁
When I turned 17, I used money that I had saved up (along with a generous birthday gift from my parents) to buy my first car, a used Honda with a ridiculous amount of miles on it. But it was mine and I loved that car. I was so excited to drive it. Took it from the dealer lot directly to the movies to meet up with my friends. Unfortunately, on the way into the theater I neglected to realize that it was indeed possible that lock your keys inside the vehicle. Nothing like walking home from a movie theater at 11 pm on the same day you bought your first new car.
When I was in middle school, during the weekends, I would step out to get lunch and go back home. I went out to get a slice of pizza and when I got to my door, I realized I forgot my keys at home! (no one was home at that time). I ended up calling a friend from a payphone, went to her house to hang out until my parents went home (these were the days before cell phones, and good thing I had my metro card on me!)
It’s a snowy winter’s night (2am to be exact) in Crested Butte, Colorado. My band had just finished playing a show at the local bar and I head out to start our van so it can warm up while we get things packed. Much to my surprise, about a foot of snow has fallen since the show started! That’s going to make the 20-minute drive back to where we’re staying take a lot longer. Oh well, we should still make it back by 3am.
I start the van and head back inside. Once we’re all packed up, we head outside to load up, head home and get some sleep. One problem… all of the doors are locked and the keys are in the ignition! No worries, we have a spare. Oh, what’s that? It’s also in the van? Perfect.
Have you ever tried to get a locksmith at 2am in a small mountain town on a Saturday night in the middle of winter? It’s not easy. To make things worse, the bar locked up around 2:30am and we had to stand outside and wait. We finally got into the van around 3am and crawled into bed around 4am. This was not how the evening was supposed to go.
Oh, did I mention that my girlfriend (now wife) was with me? I had told her how much fun band trips were and begged her to come with us. Of course this had to be the trip that I locked us out of the nice warm van, in a snow storm, in the middle of the night. Needless to say, this was the last time she came on tour with the band.
I hadn’t lived in New York, but I took the train in every so often to hang out with friends and go to concerts, hockey games, and such events. One time, after an all-day adventure of beer gardening, a Rangers-Penguins game, and some post-game live music, it eventually got time to head for the train. My friends dropped me off at Grand Central, and I walked up to the door to open it. Grasping the handle and pulling, it wouldn’t budge. This is how I learned GCT wasn’t a 24-hour location.
So, I’m locked out of Grand Central. I pull out my phone to call my friends and it’s dead. So at 4 am or so I walked from Grand Central up to the 5th Ave Apple store because it was the one place in NYC I knew was open and safe. (I learned about the blessing of 24-hour diners later.) I hung out with the geniuses until 7am or so, then headed back to GCT and took the most comfortable train ride of my life back to the Garrison station. And that’s when I found out I left my car keys behind.
While in the ARMY back in the early-mid 90’s I was stationed at Fort Richardson outside of Anchorage, AK.
My wife and I lived in an apartment complex off-base. I was at the barracks prepping for a training deployment and took a call from my wife at the CQ desk. She had stepped out to get the paper and locked herself out of our apartment (which had a door that shut AND locked automatically.) The landlord wasn’t in the office, so she wasn’t able to be let in. The one neighbor she knew wasn’t home, and she had knocked on a stranger’s door to call me (neither of us had cell phones then.) Best bit? She had just got out of the shower and was wearing slippers and wrapped in a towel. It was January.
I needed permission to leave and take care of this. My unit wasn’t on lockdown, but when prepping for deployment, a soldier can’t just leave his post. Stuff needs to get done. I was given permission, but I also had to go a trophy shop and pick up a plaque that was to be presented at an award ceremony later in the week. Whatever. Fine. My wife is wrapped in a towel in a stranger’s apartment. I got to go!
I drove into town, got my wife back inside and safe, made a new friend in the stranger neighbor, and headed to the trophy shop.
It was not uncommon for people to leave a car running while running into a store or whatnot if the task was a short one. I did this all the time. Most people carried a second set of keys so they could lock the vehicle while it ran. As did I.
After successfully saving my wife from the cold, and waiting an agonizing 20 minutes for the trophy shop employee to determine which plaque I was there to pick up, I walked out to a locked and running ’92 Geo Metro. Unfortunately, my second set of keys was at home in the bowl next to the door. Oof.
I called my wife at home. No answer. She was already out for the day running errands. Unreachable.
I called a locksmith. “Two-hour wait, maybe more.”
I called my unit. “Get your several expletives deleted back now!”
Three hours and nearly $200 later I returned to my unit–with the wrong plaque.
During college I lived with my dad and stepmother. In that house there was an extra room on the second floor besides the two bedrooms. We called it the den. It was wear the extra TV and video game system was as well as my dad’s stereo from mhe 80s which we played old cassettes of instrumental music such as Kitaro and Cusco. Well, I was in there one day working on some things while listening to music when I shut the door but the handle was broken and wouldn’t turn the bolt so I was locked in. I tried to consider going out the window but it was on the second floor with dirt and rocks below me. Finally, I grabbed a hanger from the closet and used it to slide the bold open (like they did with credit cards in the movies.) I was then free.
My university had shut down for the winter break & locked up all of the dorms. My girlfriend and I were excited to kick off the holiday by attending a concert by the band “A Perfect Circle.” However, we realized that the tickets were locked in my dorm room! So, we called the campus police, and mentioned that her asthma inhaler was locked inside the dorm and could they pretty please let us in? They acquiesced, and she “retrieved her inhaler” while I pocketed the tickets! The concert was fantastic =)
I have locked myself out of my car TWICE with the car running but my most embarrassing moment of being locked out happened when I was in junior high. Even though it was nearly 40 years ago (yikes!) I still remember it vividly.
It was a cold and snowy afternoon when my two siblings and I arrived home from school. I am the oldest and the only one who was entrusted with the house key. It was a late night for my mom at her job which meant I was in charge of my sister and brother, had to prepare dinner and we had our chores/homework to do. We were all arguing and had been since getting off the bus. I remember it as they weren’t listening to me but if you ask them I was being bossy.
Have you ever got so mad you did something just so incredibly stupid? As I stood on the stoop, bickering with my siblings, I paused just before unlocking the door and threw the key ring backwards, over our heads into the snow-covered front yard. It wasn’t new snow so we couldn’t find the spot where it landed but we searched and searched for the key ring for what seemed like an hour. Eventually, we were able to “pop” a backyard window off the sliding track and climb through into the wonderful, warm house and our happy dog who needed to go out as desperately as we needed to get in. We never found the keys. Not even after the snow melted.
I was driving home from my parents’ house one Summer evening. I had my 18-month-old daughter (Ayla) in her car seat in the back seat, and my dog Marcus (a miniature schnauzer) riding shotgun. As I was driving down the interstate, Ayla started yelling and then threw up. Repeatedly. Thankfully, I was near an exit and bolted for it. I pulled over into the nearest parking lot possible to start the cleanup process. I jumped out, leaving the car running and my phone charging on the dash. I went to the back of the car and grabbed my paper towels (I was prepared for such things), but as I went to open Ayla’s door, Marcus wondered what I was doing and jumped onto the door handle to see… hitting the LOCK BUTTON. Now I’m locked out of my car, which is running, with my phone inside, along with my dog and 18-month-old, screaming, puke-covered daughter. I ran across the lot into a McDonald’s begging for help. Thankfully, a kind person loaned me their phone, which allowed me to call OnStar, which then allowed me to get a remote unlock. But then I still had the messy baby. Not a great day. Thanks for the chance to win – I really hope I get it!
I remember getting locked out of my house once, and I had to climb down a window well to get in.
Back in college I locked myself out of my car, my boyfriend came to the rescue. He contacted the campus police for me to get my car unlocked. Well….when they showed up they arrested my boyfriend for unpaid parking tickets and put him in their jail! I had to run around town going to ATM’s to get enough cash to bail him out! Total nightmare and lesson learned~…~
One summer between my junior and senior year of college, I decided to stay in-town and live with my older sister. She has three wonderful dogs and two eccentric cats. One day she decided to go out on a date in the early evening. I agreed to stay home and take care of the pets so she could get out about doing her thing (after all, I was harshing her dating vibe that summer). She left the house, and no sooner did her Shih Tzu, Maltese, and Pit Bull ask to go outside. I take them out and the wind slammed the door shut behind us; 100 degrees Fahrenheit that day. I reached into my pocket: empty. No cell phone to call her. Thus began a 3-hour adventure of impromptu dog walks, talking with random neighbors, no family members answering there phone calls from me, and being eaten alive by misquitoes.
The story of how I actually got back inside is surely more interesting….
My brother in law was visiting and we went out for the morning. We opened the garage door like usual but the door from the garage to the house would not unlock with the key. So we had to search an open window and fortunately the one in the breakfast nook was open. We popped out the screen and hoisted my then 7 year old sone through the window who le us in. It turns out that the lock was actually broken. It would not open from the inside either. We replaced that door knob with a non locking one.
A couple of years ago I was house and cat sitting sitting for a friend over the holidays and I went by every couple days to check things and take care of the cat (a very sweet fellow named Chuck). It was an older house, and the lock on the front door was kind of finicky and difficult to open so I tended to lock the door from the inside and close it behind me on the way out to avoid fiddling with the lock and key twice. On one of the trips I left the keys inside and locked myself out without realizing it, until the next time I went to check on the house and couldn’t find the keys anywhere. In a mild panic I searched high and low, thinking I had simply lost them, but to no avail. And I had to take care of Chuck and refill his food and water, so I resolved try and break into the house if possible, otherwise I’d have to resort to a locksmith. The locksmith ended up not being necessary, but I did have to climb over the (also locked) back gate and stand on the recycling bin to reach the kitchen window, which was mercifully unlocked. After nearly falling off the bin and getting banged up a bit hauling myself up through through the window, I found the house key innocently sitting on the corner of the kitchen table and Chuck mildly puzzled and reproachful about making such a racket. Talk about feeling inept.
I sat in a stairwell for 2 hours waiting for my room mate to show up with the apartment keys.
I used to work in community based mental health, meaning I saw clients at their schools and in their houses. One afternoon I was finishing up a session with a client who lived in a small town about 20 miles away. I was getting ready to leave and remembered I had brought a coat to give to my client. I dropped my keys and phone in the driver’s seat, made sure the car door was unlocked, and went back inside. Unfortunately, I had completely forgotten that my car automatically locks the doors if it has been sitting there unlocked for over 5 minutes. Imagine my horror when I go to leave, and the door won’t open…And, I can see my phone and car keys glaring up at me from the driver’s seat. My client’s mother was on social security disability and couldn’t afford to have a data plan on her phone so looking up the number for a lock smith in the area was not an option. I thought I was going to have to walk a couple miles to a store and see if I could use a phone book. All of a sudden, my knight in shining armor drove up in a red hatchback. Another therapist from my company had come to see another family member. He graciously allowed me to use his phone, and the rest is boring history.
So it’s the Monday morning before Thanksgiving and also my mother’s birthday, and being an early person, I arrive for my 8AM class at 7AM and walk across a sizable campus to my classroom. I am actually feeling pretty bad, but I figure it’s not a big deal. I get to my classroom, and as I try to put the key in the lock, the whole door handle falls out of the door into my hand. Great! So I call maintenance/security but no one answers (which is usual). I call the switchboard/front desk but no one is technically there until 7:30, so no one answers. So I walk back across a sizable campus to the switchboard to talk to a person. There they get security on the phone and I explain through a 3rd person that the door won’t open because the handle came off. Security tells them to tell me to meet them at my classroom. I walk back. I am starting to feel really awful. Security gets there (after a while) and says, we can’t unlock this the handle fell off.
“I know! I told you that on the phone!” I think in exclamations and swear words although I calmly explain. Then they tell me that I’ll have to get another room for the day. So, I walk back to the switchboard who can help me arrange this, although there will be some delay since none of the deans have arrived yet and they are the ones who have to authorize it. So I stand around (there are no chairs) emailing whoever might be able to help and instructors who use the same classroom after I do and start to feel incredibly awful.
Then I walk to the adjunct office to make a sign telling my students about the new classroom (which is right across the hall) and then back to the classrooms with 2 minutes to spare before my class.
I was giving an exam that day, but 30 minutes into class I am feeling nauseated and sweaty and faint, so I tell my students that class is cancelled.
After a few hours of trying to feel better, I go to urgent care and then the hospital…turns out I had a twisted cyst and needed emergency surgery. :/
What a gorgeous combination from Baron Fig!
My locked out story:
I had just adopted my puppy and my boyfriend was at a soccer game. I just got home from a 12hr shift (I’m a nurse) and I was tired, but knew that the puppy needed to get outside to go to the bathroom. I never forget my keys but in this instance, I left both my apartment door unlocked and the door leading to the three apartments next to me unlocked because I would only be a second. At some point a neighbor must have also just gotten home, went inside, and locked the outside door. It was November, and I’m in Ohio, and it was very cold. I walked up to the door and realized it was locked and had a moment of panic. I didn’t have my phone (of course) and incessantly rang the door bells of my neighbors to no luck. I sat on my porch cradling my puppy to keep him warm (and myself!) and figured I would have to wait until my boyfriend got home about 1.5 hours later. Luckily, a neighbor arrived about 45 minutes later (we were getting pretty cold) and I brushed it off that we just got on the porch but would gladly follow him inside to our apartment. I felt so bad for my puppy and have been anal about keeping my keys with me ever since!
I had just finished driving 6 hours to visit my parents. I pulled up and nobody was home, and I hadn’t mentioned I was coming as it was a surprise. So I went to the door and tried unlocking it to get in and the key didn’t work. I ended up sitting on the porch thinking they’d be back for over an hour. Turned out they had changed the locks and not told me. It took 2 years before I was given a new copy.
Mid-February when I was 19-years old. On Friday my friends offered to carpool to a convention in DC, an offer I gladly took. On Sunday they drop me back off on my doorstep, driving into the distance… only for me to realize that I never took my house keys off my bed before leaving that weekend. Of course my phone was dead (early 2000’s so decent battery packs weren’t a thing yet) and I was out in the far suburbs so walking anywhere would be pointless. I was stuck standing on my porch in 30 degree weather until somebody with a key came back from work.
Thankfully I had winter gear on and also a thermal sleeping bag. I proceeded to burrito myself in the sleeping bag for 2 hours on hard concrete until my parents got home. They proceeded to laugh at my forgetful misfortune, then ordered some sympathy pizza.
I was a latchkey kid. One day as I was walking to school, I realized I had forgotten to take my homework. I panicked as the teachers were very punitive to students who didn’t have their homework completed. Then, I panicked even more as I couldn’t find my house key. I had forgotten that as well. So, I went to a basement window, broke the glass, crawled over the glass across the washing machine and got back into the house to retrieve my homework. At school I worried all day that someone would now “break” into my house through the window I had broken. It was a very scary day.
Oh the (first) lock out story that comes to mind…
I might have been 16 or 17. Was coming home late from my first job and one responsibility was to drop job related mail at the post office on my way home. It was not until I came back to my car that I realized that I had failed to take the keys out of the ignition but I had locked the car.
Being in a less connected time (i.e. before cell phones) I had to resort to fixing this lock out problem myself. Presently, I do not recall what I had found to break the window but that was the solution my 16 year old self came to.
Upon catching my dad up on my evening activities, it was then that my dad informed me that he always carries a car key/house key on two separate key rings (one in the left and one in the right pocket) to that he never has to be locked out of anything. As he explained… you never have both sets of keys out at the same time.
I was away on business, and I had just checked in to my hotel. I went up the elevator, got to my room, opened the door and walked in. I had left a piece of my luggage in the hall, since I did not have enough hands to bring everything into the room in one trip. I set down my bags and the room key on the desk, and walked right back out to get my luggage, absent-mindedly letting the door shut behind me. I went to go check for my room key, and a quick survey of my pockets proved that I had been the fool who locked his key in the room.
Back down the elevator I went, in shame. I returned to the front desk, where the receptionist couldn’t help but giggle as she processed another room key, a task she had done no more than 4 minutes earlier.
I suppose my favorite locked out story happened to me and my roommate in college. My roommate lost a bet, and in order to pay his debt, was required to run around the college dorm room in his underwear. I was asked to verify that he did, in fact, run around the entire building in his underwear – which I was happy to do…but I may or may not have “forgotten” the key to get back in the building. Did I mention it was about 20 degrees, and we had a couple feet of snow?
All in all, we were outside a good 15 minutes in the freezing cold with plenty of passer by’s laughing and pointing. He didn’t live this one down. Eventually, a floor mate had compassion and let us back in.
As college dorm stories go, this probably seems…tame, to put it mildly. But, we were students at an extremely conservative liberal arts school, and the punishment for this would have been pretty steep.
My wife and I far too rarely remember to lock the deadbolt when we leave the hose. Last summer, before leaving on a week-long business trip, I made sure to remind her to use the deadbolts while I was gone. I also have a tendency not to take house keys with me when I travel, figuring that if I don’t take them it’s impossible for me to lose them.
The two strategies together resulted in me getting dropped off exhausted from a cross-country flight and hour-plus drive from the airport to an expertly locked door to wait at while my wife was out of the house with her family.
Before I unpacked, I went straight out to the hardware store to make a couple spare keys to keep tucked away in the garage and looped into my work bag. I’ll be more than glad if I never have to use a single one.
When I was younger, we used to leave the garage door partially open. That way, us kids could crawl under the door to get the spare key and let ourselves in. One day, the door was open but, no key was to be found. Luckily for me and my friend, we found that the sliding-glass door was open. Unfortunately, it was the door to the second-story deck and the key to get a ladder was locked inside the house. I ended up giving my friend a boost (since he was the acrobatic of the two of us) so that he could get himself up on the deck. It took a few tries but, he eventually made it and was able to unlock the house from the inside. Ahhh, those were the days!
I hope this story still counts even though I’m not the one that got locked out myself. In college, I was an RA which meant I was responsible for a floor full of first years. So, during orientation week we went over what to do if you get locked out. Go to Public Safety and get a spare, unlock your room, and return the spare. A few days later at around 2 in the morning I was woken up by one of the first years asking what to do if they are locked out. Insert face palm. They didn’t know how to get to public safety, so I had to walk with them to get a key at two in the morning. Fortunately, this particular student was really appreciative of the help and it became a running joke for the rest of the year.
In college my friends accidentally stole a car and got locked out of it.
Alex got drunk so we took him to a friends house. At some point it gets arranged that Angela should drive his car to him, so she has the keys and meets up with us later. Except she arrives in a car that wasn’t his. The doors weren’t locked when she picked it up in the parking lot (small town), and while his key worked well enough in the ignition, it couldn’t open the door locks…which Angela had locked behind her.
So most of us are just laughing at this ridiculous situation, eventually they manage to break into the car and drive it back to the bar. If anyone noticed, we didn’t hear about it.
I was babysitting for a toddler and preschool-aged child, and we got locked out of the house in winter! We had to go next door (I knew the parents trusted them) to call and stay warm. Embarrassing, but I’d like to think I kept my cool and the kids didn’t realize I was panicking.
I only have one “locked out” story I can even share … so I guess I’ve been pretty lucky. I was about 10 years old (5th grade?) and a “latch-key” kid. We lived in Germany and I had ridden the bus home and realized that somewhere I had lost my key. I had to wait about three hours for my dad to get home. Fortunately, a neighbor saw me sitting on my front step and took pity on me. She brought me in and I attempted to call my dad … but he worked in a secure facility and didn’t always get calls. Fortunately, I was well fed and just waited out the time until he got home.
I locked myself out of my house just a few weeks after moving in. I didn’t have anything on me and my phone was dead. I tried using a portion of my phone cover to no avail. Finally, a neighbor who had been watching through their window came out and offered to help me pick the lock. I took a few tries with various cards and pins but we finally got in. As I thanked her, she said “I sure hope I didn’t just let you in to a home you don’t own!” and walked away. That was the first welcome to our neighborhood.
One sunny morning I decided to quickly step outside to clean off my patio windows before work. As soon as I stepped outside I heard the lock on my patio door click.
I panicked. I just locked myself out and had no way to get back inside.
I called my boss to let her know I was locked out of my apartment, and I would be late. I called my landlord to let me back in.
The kicker?
My boss? My landlord? Same person.
My job? Well, among other things, I unlock doors for people who lock themselves out!
Not technically and “I” got locked out, but a “she” got locked out and “we” had to help her. A friend of mine in high school was notorious for locking her keys in her car, usually with the engine still running. While it was frustrating, there usually weren’t any bad effects from it, aside from having to find a phone (this was pre-cellphone days) and waiting for her mom or dad to show up with the spare keys. To remedy this, we gave her a set of big and colorful baby teething keys to put on her car key ring, thinking “she can’t possibly forget her keys now.” Oh how wrong we were. Unfortunately, the next time she locked her keys in the car with it running was on the beach…with the tide coming in… Did you know that with enough people you can actually lift a car and move it? Too bad we didn’t have that many people, so it was a windy drive home with the driver’s side window broken out…
the most awkward locked out story happened in my apt in kc. i went to unlock my front door and my key broke off in the lock! it was a total wtf moment. i had to go track down maintenance and they had to drill out my key! i was so glad it didn’t happen after hours. i would have been hosed.
another fun story was when my friend got locked out of her house. she totally just forgot her keys. we were able to use a credit card to unlock a window and crawl inside. it was one of those things you see on tv but i never expected it to actually work. (my friend has since replaced that window because dang was it not secure!)
I decided to put a lock screen password on my desktop computer. I wrote down the password and put it away. Somehow the password got thrown away and I was locked out of my computer forever.
So…nearing my wife’s due date for our first child, We took an excursion to the library to distract her. While we we inside picking up dvds and books, she started having early labor symptoms. We got to the car to go back home, and realized the keys were inside (my fault). The care/locksmith service took forever to come…luckily, the library had not yet closed and childbirth (that time) was a marathon rather than a sprint.
After attending an outdoor play I put my folding chair in the car and returned to chat with the cast. A short wile later I noticed that my keys were gone. They had fallen out of my pocket while the chair was being put away and were lying on the back seat, safely locked in the car! (This was over a hundred mile out of town too.) Had to call a lock smith to get the door opened.
Great to see you guys in Little Rock! Loved your table and your work.
My brother was house sitting for his band teacher. He went out back one morning to feed the dog, shorn. The door closed behind him with an ominous ‘click.’ His phone was inside. He was only wearing underwear. “It was at that moment…” (you know the rest…). He considered going to the neighbors house for help. But a pale white guy at your front door clad only in boxers would probably not go well. So he just sat down and waited. He reasoned that If he didn’t show at work, someone would come, eventually. All morning he could hear his phone ringing like mad. Work called. Mom called. Our other Brother called. Dad called. Everyone is panicking. Something must be terribly wrong. Finally the other brother goes to the house, convinced he’s coming to collect the body of our deceased brother. And there he was, smiling on the back porch. In his underwear. Everyone was glad and furious at the same time, but to his credit, his strategy worked!
Who was shorn? Brother or dog?
Many years ago when my daughters were still little we were locked out of the house due to miscommunication with my husband. I had to hoist one up to the kitchen window and get her to crawl in. Her biggest fear was not that she would fall but that someone would see her. We made sure to hide a spare key after that.
First day of my summer job after high school, I turned off my car, got out, manually locked the door locking my keys in the ignition. I explained the problem and asked the receptionist for a wire hanger, which I used to unlock my car.
More like a “I got locked in” story, but when I moved into my first ever dorm room on the first day of my freshman year of college, I was unable to get the door open despite having the right key. The RA’s universal key didn’t work either. Eventually with enough force we were able to get the door open, as it turns out it was sealed shut by a thick coat of paint on the door that didn’t quite fit properly in the door frame. Late that night when setting up my room to go to sleep, I tried to go out of my room to use the bathroom and found that the door wouldn’t open again. I couldn’t get enough grip on the knob to yank it open, and I had no one to call for help since I had moved into the dorm early and no other students were on campus yet. I was locked in my own room and locked out of the rest of the dorm, and my way out was calling the campus police to get them to kick the door open for me. Afterwards, maintenance spent hours sanding the paint off my door so I wouldn’t be locked out again. It was a great start to college.
Leaving work and knew I needed fuel, pulled into the gas station and my car died, managed to roll it to a pump. Got it fueled and went in to pay, came out and realized that when I locked the car to go pay I had left my keys on the passenger seat. Fortunately a fireman was on his way home and had a jimmy bar with him and got it unlocked for me!
When I first moved to the US I was going for a bike ride and left the keys in my rented room. Luckily, the neighbor was home and was able to show me how to climb up on the trash cans, remove the screen on the window and climb in trough the window to get the keys. I never left my keys in the room again, and I remembered to lock my window too. 🙂
I rented a friend’s house for a while. One night my mom came to have dinner. We went out and… I forgot to bring the keys with me. So I ended up breaking a window to the basement in the back. That caught the neighbor’s attention but my mom defused things by yelling,”It’s okay, he lives here.” I got the window replaced for $100.
But it turned out that all the windows on the front side of the house were unlocked. Oops. Oh well. At least the story came in handy here.
As latch-key kids, my older brother and I were pretty hopeless. Though highly responsible in general, we rarely remembered to bring a house key with us and were often locked out. The instance that I remember most clearly, however, was when a neighbor took pity on us as we sat on the front steps of the house awaiting our parents and brought us freshly-baked cookies. It was the start of a decades-long friendship.
Locked Out of Civilization by Hurricane Matthew.
October 14, 2016, hurricane Matthew has just pounded the North Carolina. My wife, our pot belly pig Daisy, and I were staying in a rental house in Ocean Isle, NC while our home in Myrtle Beach, SC was being built. We had heard reports all week that the storm was coming. Some reports said it was going to miss us, while others said it was going to definitely hit. We decided to not take a chance and head for Charlotte, North Carolina. We ended up renting a hotel and that night it ended up getting hit hard by the rain. We were only at the hotel for 3 hours, when we then decided to pack our stuff and try to head more inland.
We ended up in a town called Lumberton, NC. We could not find a hotel and the rain was coming down super hard. It was really hard to drive in. My wife, Daisy and I decided to sleep in the hotel’s parking lot that did not have any more rooms available for anyone. The next morning we woke up and tried to head back to home. We soon found out that the power was cut because of the storm. Luckily our tanks were full. After being stranded 3 days, with low food, water, and no power sleeping in our cars, we had to try to get out. We finally came across a road that was flooded. With my wife in her car, and myself in mine with Daisy in my back seat, we decided to risk it. It was our only way to get back to Ocean Isle, NC.
My wife decided to pick up a steady speed and try to skim across the flooded two-lane road. I then quickly skimmed behind her. There were times where I found my tires quickly spinning but I kept on the gas. My wife successfully made it across. I was at that point halfway. I then pushed the gas pedal to the floor as my car had started to slow down from the water dragging it down. I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it across. With a final yank of the wheel, my car stopped slowing down and quickly gained traction again. I successfully made it across. People in huge lifted trucks on the opposite side looked at my wife’s Ford Focus and my Chevy Cruze in astonishment that we had made it across a flooded road where water was rushing across it.
At the end of the road, we were finally able to make it to this very old gas station that surprisingly had gas from a backup generator. We filled up and then after a couple detours and back roads made it back to Ocean Isle, NC. We felt really stupid because nothing happened on our street. We could have stayed and been safe the entire time. We know better to take a chance with a hurricane though. No matter what we were leaving. We were relieved to be back home, and not locked out from society any longer.
Came home late one night. Went for the house keys in the jacket pocket they were always in. Couldn’t find them. Thought I had left them in the house so had to break in through a basement window. Once inside; I found the keys; in a different pocket.
Two summers ago, a friend and I decided to camp on Angel Island. Since it was fairly close, we decided to public transport there. As I was coming back, I realized that I forgot to bring keys because all our house keys are attached to car keys and I didn’t drive my car. I was pretty panicked because I had a dinner to attend that evening and I knew hiking clothes was not part of the dress code. Since there were no spare keys, I had to break in through a window. It was a little too easy for comfort. When I finally got in, I could not have been more happy/exhausted.
I was heading to work (early morning shift) and living in the deep North had a lot of ice and snow to get off the car before going anywhere. I started the car so the defrost could work on the window from the inside while I took the brush and scraper to the outside. By the time I got all the windows clear I found that I had (out of habit) locked the door behind me so I was locked out of my (running) car and my apartment. My phone was in my purse which was in the car. I went upstairs and knocked on my neighbor’s door…. remember this is an early morning and it was a weekend so I woke them up. They had only recently moved in and we had not yet officially met. She tried to help break into my apartment (we failed) and let me use her phone & phone book to call and get somebody to get into my car. The police couldn’t\wouldn’t help but gave me the number to a tow truck company that was open at that hour and could help with a lock-out. My neighbor was nice enough to wait with me until they arrived, my car was very toasty by the time they got me back in, and my neighbor became one of my closest friends & mother to my god-children.
My wife has a friend who is perpetually single and very unhappy about it, to the point that she does hurtful things unintentionally. One of these things is that she annually organizes “ladies only” events for her birthday, even though she would be super offended if she were to be excluded from the birthdays of any of her male friends. It’s a little thing, but it annoys me because I’ve made an effort to include her in my celebrations, with no reciprocity.
Anyway, a few years ago, on the evenings of this friend’s birthday celebration, I decided that rather than sitting at home at our apartment by myself being annoyed, I’d have a friend over and make my own evening activities. I called my friend, and while waiting for him, I ran my dogs outside for a walk. Unfortunately, I left my apartment keys inside, and I had turned the little thumb-lock on the door handle, so once the door was shut, I was locked out. I called my friend back to give him a warning, but he said he had nothing better to do, so he still came over, and we hung out on my back porch (I had a terrace level apartment, so we just walked around behind the building.) After a couple of hours he bid his adieu, and I finally decided to call my wife, and break the news to her that I had been locked outside all night. She took it as her excuse to exit for the night (I even told her that if she wanted to run home, toss me her keys, and run back I’d have no issue with that) and so she came home and rescued me from being stuck outdoors.
I am currently locked out of my tablet. For months the only way I could enter my pin was by holding the tablet vertically. That was fine until a few days ago when the tablet froze in the vertical position and will not change no matter what position I hold it in.
I parked to go to school and opened my door, but realized I needed to pack some things in my backpack I had sort of just slung into the car. While I was doing this I pulled my key out by just a notch to get it to stop beeping at me. I get stuff done, get out and push my door shut, checking my pocket at the same time and find it empty. Yep. Keys were still in the ignition. At least the engine wasn’t on. But I did have to get my father to drop off the spare.