Locked Out
By Paul Lyons
Getting to know a new house always takes time. When I was either house sitting or crashing at places a few months back, there was inevitably the issue of the trash. This one is for recycling. This one is for compost – oh yeah... you can put tuna casserole in there too. This one is just plain old regular trash. Also, people can come up with secret places for their trash. Very annoying.
Laundry is usual pretty straight forward. Try as best I can, I separate the clothes by color. I then dump them in the washer and turn the dials around until it sounds right – not the groaning sound like it is on the washing machine five-minute-break cycle – but the "yes, I am getting to work and I have turned on the water" cycle. "See you in forty-five minutes. Don't be late like last time. Your clothes will smell bad if you leave them in here too long and I do not want to do this all over again!"
So an hour later I pull the load out of the washing machine and head to the backyard where I wanted to hang out some of the big items. It is a beautiful sunny day. There is no clothesline so I improvise a few hangings – from this tree to this chair, over the fence in the sun, over a chair. It is all looking really good when I hear – shhhhhhhhhooooooooBBBBOOOOMMMM. I look back and the back door has blown closed by the wind. It is the only way back into the house. I think: no problem. Why would the back door be locked? So I check to see and it is locked. I am locked out. There is no quick way in.
They say that most accidents happen in your own house in the kitchen or the bathroom. Why not just stay on the couch, never bathe and order out? For me, most lockouts occur when you hang laundry out in your backyard. So here I was assessing the situation. I knock on the door and call "hello!" a few times to no avail. No one is in the house and the downstairs renters obviously must be out.
I had left the back windows on the second floor open to air out the place. They are wide open. I look around for a ladder but there are none. Unfortunately I cannot find the Batman rope with the magic metal prong thingies either. So there is no climbing my way out of this. I look over the fence to the other backyards for perhaps a ladder. No luck. Being in the middle of the block is of no help. Without an alley, there would be at least five fences climb over to get to the street and I am not excited about running into Rex – the unknown overexcited guard dog.
Perhaps there is a key hidden under a nearby rock or plant. I look through the likely places. Instead of a key I only discover panic-stricken rolly pollies, worms and ants scurrying madly to darker places.
The front door of the house is unlocked so there is a way in the house if only I could get out of this fenced-in backyard. I call my trusty brother-in-law on my cellphone. He lives ten blocks away. I get his voice mail. In a calm and nonchalant way, I leave a message asking him if he could please call me about an important pressing manner. I cannot think of a single person not at work or many miles away.
For a brief minute I think up a dark, existential play about some Chinese-American guy who gets locked out in his backyard in the Sunset District in this very house in San Francisco. No one responds. No one every goes out into their backyard. The Chinese-American guy ends up a pile of bones in a lawn chair. The lights fade. The curtain closes.
So just when I am starting to get a bit macabre, the backdoor to the neighbor’s house opens. VOOOVOOMMMBB. A young guy walks out. He is out for a smoke break. After a few minutes, not giving in that I am in a complete panic, I ask him if it would be possible for me to hop over the fence, walk through his garage so I can get back into my house. Dave is a nice guy. Sure no problem. My name is Dave. Thanks a ton.
Not the first time I have been bailed-out by some guy in his twenties, with lots of interesting jewelry pierced throughout various locations in his head. Smoke breaks. A new public safety imperative.
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