House Keys – Irish Coat Hanger Manipulation

House Keys – Irish Coat Hanger Manipulation

[su_dropcap]I[/su_dropcap] have painters at my house.  They have been here for two days.  This morning Mark and I had a small conversation about how he would not be home tonight, as he has to do something somewhere else in Ireland and he will be home tomorrow.  He gave his house keys to the painters, and he told them that when they finish at the place, to take his keys, and lock the door from the outside and push the keys through the mailbox slot in the door.  He told them to kind of try to throw them through the mailbox slot so that I would be able to get the door open when I get home.  Then Mark was going to pick up my house keys from me tomorrow at work so that he could get in after he got back to Dublin.

That was the plan…

I met with my friend Fabiana and we went to the Led Zeppelin ‘Celebration Day’ movie concert.  That is not a part of the story, other than the information that sometime during the encore, I realized that my house keys were not in my pocket.  I tried to not freak out, and I tried to watch the last ten minutes of the concert, but those minutes were lost on me due to the speed that my brain was moving, trying to figure out how to get myself through/out of this.  The door was open when the painters were here, and I did not have to lock the door behind me when I left, which obviously threw off my routine when I entered the house with an open door and when I left the house again with an open door.  I knew as soon as I realized that my house keys were not in my pocket that they were on my dresser in my house and that at 11pm, the painters were long gone.

Out of all of the nights that I have been here, this is the very first night that Mark has not been home.  This is also the first time that Mark has not had his own house keys.  Therefore, this is the first time that Mark has been relying on me to get into his house because his keys were now locked in the house with mine.

I barely looked for my keys in the theatre, certain that they were in my house with my out-of-sync groove.

The timing of this was unbelievable.  I have never locked my keys in my house before in my life.  And it happened in the absolute worst possible scenario in my life.  Also, it was raining outside.

Fabiana told me to come and sleep on her couch.  No way.  I was resolving this!

I went to one of the only two late night convenience stores I could find.  The first one had nothing of any use to the situation.  The second one had a flashlight for me, but not the wire coat-hangers that I wanted.  I went to about three pubs, but no one had wire coat-hangers, or else they were too suspicious of my request to sort me out.  I went to a hotel.  The guy at the front desk was Polish.  I showed him my flashlight and told him that I needed some wire coat-hangers and I would pay for them, or even return them.  I told him my story.  He was talking to his friend in Polish on the phone and his friend said to him, “No chance” on me getting my hands on any wire coat-hangers.  I am not sure if that ‘No chance’ meant that I would not find them, or if they would not provide them.

The guy behind the desk stared, stared hard, into my eyes, and asked me again what I needed a coat-hanger for.  I explained that I had locked my keys in my house but that I had a plan to go in through the mailbox to get the keys off the floor.  He could see the total honesty in me although he was still a little hesitant.  I promised him that he would not be an accessory to a crime.  He went through the two vacant rooms in the hotel to scour them for wire hangers.  No coat-hangers in either room.  He said, “Wait, I will check the store clerk room.”  He came back with a wire hanger.  I high-fived him.  I realized it would be too short.  He got me a second one.  Awesome!

With my new flashlight, and two coat-hangers, Fabiana and I made our way through the rain to my house.  Either:
A) The house keys would be far inside of the door and I would be able to see them if the painters had paid attention to Mark’s instructions.
B) The house keys would be right against the inside of the door because they just dropped them in and I would never be able to see them to retrieve them.
C) The painters would still have the house keys because they had some finishing touches in the morning to complete.

A and C were the only acceptable circumstances.  I was in pretty good spirits considering…

We got to the door, and I peeked though the mailbox.  A) I could not see the keys,  C) The stairway was cleaned off from the painters rags, so that meant that they were finished.  That meant the worst scenario…B.

Nope, I could not see the keys…  Then…luckily…my friend had a solution to hold her i-Phone though the mailbox, using the camera on it to see directly below.

Keys!

Sweet!  I took apart the coat-hangers, I stretched them out into a straight line, and left a partial hook in the end of the curl that hangs the hanger.  One was too short to reach the floor, so I wired them together to get double length.  I pushed and wiggled and used a lot of patience, and between the two of us, we pushed the keys with this shakey, flimsy wire so that eventually they were in plain view from the mailbox slot, on the floor inside.  My neighbour came out, and I made it clear that I lived with Mark, so that he did not think I was breaking in because we certainly looked suspicious.  I asked him for a stick or something, and he brought out some barbecue parts that were too short.

I asked the neighbour for a broom, took the handle of it, inserted it inside of the mailbox so that it was completely inside of the door.  I held the broom through the maixbox slow and with a couple of fingers I pushed the keys into better view.  I put my hanger-wire back in after I modified the hanger-curl, took a few swipes, and eventually got the hook through the ring.  Slowly, gently, and patiently, I was able to lift the keys from the floor up through the mailbox slot, nearly dropping them once just on the inside of the door.  I got my hands on them!  I was in!  High-fives.

I went to my room and there were my house keys on my bed.  A happy ending after all.

‘Murphy’s’ law…in Ireland