I shall now tell you the saga of my busted key, because it was the cherry on the whipped cream on the pie of hilarious WTF that has been the past few days of my life.
The deadbolt on my front door has been a bit wonky for a while. The key won't go in easily. I don't know why - there's rust in the mechanism, sand, tiny dead bugs. Something. Florida is a cruel environment to man-made objects. It's plenty cruel to nature, too. What I usually did was put the key in the lock as far as it would go, and then give it a pop with the heel of my hand, covered in the end of my shirt, or my purse strap, or anything else. That would skip it in and get the lock open. Why didn't I replace it as soon as this was a problem? Because I'm stupid sometimes.
Now. Bleu had dropped me off after a day of adventur. Before I got out of the car, I said something like, "Would you do me a kindness and wait a bit until I get the door open? The lock is so sticky, I need to replace it." She agreed, and I hopped out of the car -- holding my purse, a hoodie, a water bottle, and a book.
For reasons I still do not understand and cannot explain, I decided that the best push for the key would be the book. I fitted the key as far into the lock as it would go, held the book against the end of it, and gave it a whack. It did nothing. I leaned on the book a little. It slid. I re-aligned it and pushed harder. Slowly, the way you watch a glass pitcher full of something horribly stainy fall in slow motion, slowly the book edged closer to the lock until it was very nearly lying flat on the door. I'd bent the key.
I bent a house key with a feckin' paperback copy of
Eat Pray Love and my own brute force, which is ridiculous because I have all the upper-body strength of a hamster.
What I did next was obvious: try to bend the key back. Keys are not known for their tensile strength. The thing snapped off. I held my
key chain up - with the two keys to one car, with the dead iridescent beetle in a block of lucite, with the green plastic frog that lights up red when I squeeze it - and glared at this pathetic stubby little half-a-key as though I could make it grow back with the Force.
I shuffled back to the car in defeat, waving as I approached. Bleu leaned over and unlocked the door. I climbed in, holding my pathetic snapped key in front of me. As soon as she saw the thing all sad and broken, she about fell over herself laughing. To be fair, I did the same thing a moment later. Of course, what we did next - before trying to find a solution to this problem - was take pictures of the stump key and
tell the
internet.
It was about one in the morning. My mother, you know, takes some pretty strong medication, so when she's asleep, she is out. Dead to the world. Nothing can wake her -- telephones, airplanes, music, television, Riley, zombie invasions, the second coming of Christ. None of it. Riley was awake and alert, but she was being quiet and there's a reason for that. I'm her mostly-hairless primate, and she knows the sounds I make. She doesn't bark at me unless we're playing and I need to THROW THE BALL ALREADY. If I want to bang on the front door at stupid o'clock, she'll not sound the alarm. It's just me being weird again.
I found myself standing sadly at the front door while Riley nosed the curtain aside, went OHAI IT'S YOU ARE WE PLAYING A GAME? -- and then sat, obediently, silently, happily. It's one in the morning in the backswamp, there's a cloud of mosquitoes, it's a hundred and sticky degrees, and I'm all RILEY HEY RILEY COME ON GIRL, BARK, RILEY SPEAK, SPEAK, DAMNIT TIMMY IS STUCK IN THE WELL, GO GET HELP. Riley tilted her head, ran her tongue out in a dog-smile, and wondered what this strange new game was.
This is where Bleu said, "We need Elvis."
I stared. "We what?"
She shrugged. "Elvis! Doesn't she
bark when you play Elvis?"
Something inside me broke. "I am not going to stand on my own porch at one in the morning singing All Shook Up TO MY DOG."
"Maybe you should," she said, and then I got laughed at again, which was fair, because my frazzled angry gesture was done with the hand holding the stubby snapped key.
Then we had twenty very not fun - and not funny - minutes of me slogging through the jungle in my back yard, banging on the windows, the two of us alternating calling the house line, marveling at the fact that apparently nothing bothers my neighbors, and cursing at one very playful and unnaturally silent dog the whole time. Eventually my mother woke up, let us in, Riley did her canine guided missile thing to show her happiness about a fun new game, and Lucy had some 'splaining to do. I gave it my best attempt.
After the story was told, my mother had one simple question: "Why didn't you just call?" The look I gave her made her laugh.
I have decided to teach Riley things like "bark repeatedly when I tell you," and "go get Mom." She's smart, she can do it. But first I have to go get a new lock and put it in the door, because half of my key is still stuck in there.
That wasn't the strangest thing that happened that day, either.
