Few conversations have
been more interesting – in an anxiety-inducing way – than the one I had with
the locksmith who worked on my bedroom door one afternoon. I had
unintentionally locked myself out of the room, and when I realized that the key
was inside the room, I asked my mom for the spare. For some reason, there wasn’t
any in the bunch of carefully labeled keys we perused. Okay, no problem –
one can find everything on the Internet, I told myself. All I had to do was
look for a video on You Tube on how to pick a lock (thank God my laptop was in
the living room).
Little did I know that they only make it look easy in movies
– just a few seconds of tinkering with two little tools on that knob then the
door magically opens. The burglar is in business! At least that’s how it always
is in cop shows and suspense flicks I’ve seen. Why couldn’t I do it? I even
tried using an old credit card, sliding it up and down the narrow opening while
testing the knob if it yielded to my cajoling.
By this time, I was silently begging the credit card not to
let me down. Was I going to have to break down the door? And how in the world
was I going to do that? Again, my only reference for this would be movie scenes
that depicted cowboys or big, heroic gentlemen in suits or the Marines who successfully kicked
down doors at the first attempt. I wasn’t about to try that and make like a
stuntman.
When nothing worked, I decided I would have to get a
locksmith. It happened to be a Sunday, so looking for an available one was more
difficult than usual. I followed a few leads given by friends, tracking some of
them down only to come upon padlocked booths or kiosks.
Finally, this unassuming man whom I had seen several times with
his cart and “key duplication/shoe repair/umbrella repair” signage at a street
corner about 10 minutes away from our house was up for the job! Hurray!
Within half an hour he was outside my room, working two
little tools on the keyhole. It was fascinating to watch and I instantly wanted
to learn the skill. It would definitely come in handy for just the fix in which
I found myself!
I have forgotten the exact exchange we had that allowed me
to unearth the facts pertaining to his admirable talent, but in those 3 or so
minutes I asked him how he learned to do the lock-picking and was nonchalantly
told his being in prison enabled him to acquire the expertise. Now hearing that
from a man who was inside your home and fiddling with the knob on your bedroom
door has the potential to make beads of sweat instantly form on your forehead
and give you that sinking feeling. That’s what happened to me in the next few
moments. I also froze (metaphorically, of course).
I don’t like this conversation, I seem to have thought to
myself at that point. Note that I seem to have thought it because
the details of those moments escape me now. Everything just became fuzzy from
then on, swimming inside my head – did he build a career on picking locks in
illegal situations and got jailed for it, and perfected the skill while in
prison? Or did he do time and simply taught the “craft” to the other inmates in
a skills training of sorts? I just know the word “prison” was somewhere in
there, and visions of him in a group engaged in a lock-picking demo remain in
my mind.
I don’t remember what I said after that, but my
sinking-feeling-in-beads-of-sweat-and-frozen-demeanor would have lasted longer
than a few seconds had the locksmith been less skillful – shortly after
revealing the circumstances pertaining to his expertise, he casually turned the
knob and gave the door a slight push. Open sesame! Seeing the door slowly swing
toward my bedroom gave me the feeling of witnessing the parting of the Red Sea.
It was a welcome sight indeed, mostly because it meant I would not have to
spend another minute with the dude whose honesty was admirable but whose timing
in revealing unsavory aspects of himself would be funny only if it happened in
some movie, not in real life (and certainly not to me)!
I did thank him for his service (he was fast, too, unlocking
that door in 4 minutes tops), paid him and promptly showed him the way out. Thank
God nothing untoward happened. I was grateful, too, that I didn’t have to break
down the door or ask one of my brothers or nephews to kick it open,
stuntman-style.
When I see my keys, sometimes I’m reminded of
this lock-picking incident. I even wonder about the talented Mr. Locksmith from
time to time. What has become of him? How much does he make in a day? Has he
saturated the market in our area and decided to move to another location? He
and his cart are no longer on the street corner that used to be his regular
post. I sure hope his key duplication and umbrella/shoe repair services
generate plenty of customers and enable him to make ends meet, whatever his
needs may be. His lock-picking expertise sure is awesome; let’s hope it’s used
only for purposes that don’t deserve another stint behind bars. Well, for all I
know, he could have just said those things to get a kick out of seeing the
expected reaction. It’s possible none of it is true and that his talents and
interests simply lie in keys and locks – and getting careless key owners out of
their predicament is just something he does on the side.
