My Monday evening current event will be posted later tonight, but first, I would like to share a rather amusing story.
The story begins on an exciting Christmas break vacation that my family took several years ago. We had been invited to spend Christmas with our cousins who lived near San Francisco. They had a gorgeous house in the mountains a little way from the city. Christmas day came and went and everyone had a lot of fun. There were laughs and children and presents all around and games (this was the first and only time that I played Settlers of Catan, for the record). My family's flight back home was scheduled a couple days after Christmas. However, there was a slight conflict in the scheduling in that my cousins were going to leave for a vacation the day before our flight. They graciously allowed us to spend the night in their house regardless. Unfortunately, we were going to have no way to get their house key back to them. So an elaborate scheme was concocted.
The concocted plan was a thing of beauty. Our flight was early in the morning, so we would get a few hours of sleep (with the exception of my brother who opted to just stay up the whole night). When our alarms went off at 3:30am we would awake and finish packing our belongings into our rental car. With the packing finished, we fished around our food stores and ate a very minimal breakfast (think granola bars and the like). A last once-over of the house, and it would be time for us to exit the house. Not wanting to take a key with us, I was volunteered as the one who would stay in the house to lock the front door. It was then that I was instructed to leave through the garage. The trick to this was that I had to push the button to close the garage door, then promptly get out, making sure to hop over the sensor at the end (without this final touch, the door would have rolled back up). A real life obstacle course. And it was awesome. I my performance was marvelous and flawless. The garage door closed with a reassuring thud. We assembled by the car and got in.
At this point it's still very early in the morning (like 4am), so it was still pitch black. We still had plenty of time to make it to the airport for our flight (my family is like that, they plan to be at the airport 2 hours in advance).
It wasn't until we were in the car that my mom realized that she didn't have the car key (to those of you unfamiliar with cars, keys are essential in most cars if you want to start the ignition, which allows the car to be driven). Now this is a serious problem. We are outside the house that is securely locked, but our car key is inside the house. Oh, and at this point in time none of us had cell phones...not even my mom. Winning plan, right? Yep. 4am, without keys, or phones...and with a deadline. So we did the only sensible thing. We knocked on the neighbor's door. Fortunately, the husband of that family was an early riser. Being that the neighbors did not have a spare key, we contacted a locksmith. The locksmith arrived a short time later. Of course, the locksmith wasn't about to just break into someone's house for us (really? That would have been awesome). So, we had Superman impersonate my cousin (they don't look alike, but what did the locksmith know?) and forge his signature. The locksmith got us in and left. We got the key, and I navigated through the obstacle course for the second time that morning. This time, we managed to actually leave. And we even made it to the airport. Unfortunately, we ended up having to fly standby.
The moral of the story is...if you ever need to get into a house, impersonate the owner and get a locksmith to pick the lock for you. It's almost legal...
~The Piebald Penguin
