Lost in Translation

I've made that rookie blogger error of letting the adventures pile up and neglecting the posts. I promise to backtrack and rectify that over the next few days (albeit with photographs and vaguely connected poorly punctuated pseudo-sentences) but in the meantime, you'll never bloody guess what happened tonight.

I got locked out of my bedroom.

See, in America, instead of having nice sensible door keys that look like something from The Secret Garden like we do back home, they have a fiddly little twisty turny thing on the door knob. If you twist this fiddly little twisty turny thing and then close the door it locks. Which means it is entirely possible to lock yourself out of your own damn bedroom!

Who invented that? Who's brilliant idea was that? I mean honestly, who ever needs to leave their bedroom, and lock it behind them, without the use of a key? I have been locking my bedroom because I'm in a sort of boarding house and all my Apple gadgetry and my Taytos are inside. With a key! When am I ever going to need to lock it but not need to get back in at some point? Do they expect you to have a little bedroom butler who answers the door when you do the secret knock? Or are they planning for a contingency where you never want to open a given door again. Say if it were really messy. Or haunted.

I couldn't fathom it. One should not be able to lock oneself out of one's bedroom, any more so than one should be able to lock oneself in or out of one's car. So alien was this concept to me that my first thought was "Huh, I wonder why someone has locked themselves in my bedroom? I hope they're not eating my Taytos..."

Anyway, it was so ridiculous I was more concerned about my salmon burning than being unable to get my phone charger. But as Lolly and Bryon struggled to get me back in they kept coming down stairs for ever so slightly differently shaped household objects that may or may not be useful for lock picking situations. When Benny went up with an unravelled wire hanger, a lighter, and a bar of soap I started to worry. I was of course absolutely no use in this situation because all you need to pick an Irish lock is a magazine under the door and a pokey device to push the key out the other side. Check out the design of this yoke. 

And the worst of it is the little fiddly twisty turny thing on the inside is really freakin' easy to twist without noticing. 

We tried every spare key in the house. Why does nobody label their spare keys? I was sorely tempted to hold onto the jar and make it my personal mission for the summer to label every one of them. Then Matthew landed home evidently looking for a project. Long after Bryon and Lolly (those jerks) had given up and started chowing on ice cream, Matthew doggedly inserted a variety of butter knives, credit cards and braincells into my door jam, and lo and behold he cracked it! The lock, not the door jam. He immediately went to shut it again to "see how [he] did it." I had the presence of mind to pop inside first.

So here I am in my bedroom, playing with my Apple gadgetry, eating my Taytos. Man I hope they bust me out of here soon...