Locked Out

The car rolled into the driveway. Gravel crunched and the night darkened even more. I flattened my karate uniform, picking lint off my black belt. My dad hit the garage opener, and the door groaned and screeched open.

Before driving inside, we admired the brand new windows, the glass shining. So... so... unlike our old windows.... so CLEAN...

Getting my bag out of the car, I hopped up the one step and yanked on the doorknob. It didn't turn. I yanked harder. Still, it remained stationary. "Come on..." I muttered quietly. "OPEN..."

My dad nudged me aside and pulled on the doorknob. "Time for a new tactic," he said gamely. He rubbed his hands together and shouted. "ABRA-CADABRA!"

"Dad, PLEASE..." I gasped. "I'm sweaty. I want to get out of this uniform and take a shower." I ran my hand along my hair, vexed at the little bumps that appeared in my pony-tail. My mane wasn't exactly very easy to tame.

"Okay, fine. We'll do it your way," he said, heaving on the doorknob, pulling the door back and forth on its frame. It shook and rattled, but didn't magically come unlocked.

I sighed. "I'll try the front door...." I stepped outside and followed the walk up to the screen door. I jiggled the handle. "Oh, that's just GREAT," I snapped. "Locked. AGAIN."

Plodding back into the garage, Dad suggested we try the back door. He disappeared to the back of the house, only to reappear only minutes later with a somewhat angry and very annoyed look on his face.

My dad pulled out his cellphone and flipped it open. I knew he was calling my mom by the way he yelled at her voicemail.

"We can't get into the house, so we need you to come home as soon as you can." He snapped the phone closed. "If your brother's baseball game goes on for as long as it's supposed to, she won't be home until after 10," Dad informed me.

"So..... what do we do now?" I asked.

Dad shrugged. "Wait, I s'pose," he said, although it seemed like he was in as much disbelief as I was.

Locked out of my own house. How lame was that? I seriously considered just ramming into the door. I quickly dismissed the thought. Smashing into the door with about ninety pounds of teenager would undoubtably just smush me into a substance not unlike mashed potatoes.

Dad pulled out his phone again. He dialed Mom's number. "I'm just going to keep calling until she picks up," he told me.

"Good luck with that," I told him, mentally reminiscing about Mom's bad habit of leaving her purse in the car, never once bringing it to the sidelines of any of the kids' sports games.

We sat around for about ten minutes, me constantly checking my watch. 8:31. 8:33. 8:34. 8:35. 8:34. Hold on a second....

"Well, only and hour and twenty minutes left until Mom gets home," I grumbled sarcastically.

"Oh.... @(#$*!" my dad swore colorfully. "Mom doesn't have a key. We're all locked out."

Thinking stupidly, I said "Should we call the cops?"

Dad looked at me hard. "Erm, no. We need to break in. To our own house."

The king of all lameness. Breaking into your own house.

Dad called Mom's cellphone again as I slumped against the door. "Oh, man..." I groaned. I heard Mom's ringtone blare inside the house. So she didn't even TAKE her phone. Lucky us.

As we strode to the back yard, we explored our options. We were very reluctant to breaking the brand new, shining windows. "Hey, Dad. How about one of these?" I asked, gesturing to the little window underground that led to the basement.

"Yeah, I suppose that would be the best spot to get in...." Dad said. He gently lowered himself into the roughly four foot hole. Night had descended. I felt like a criminal, in the middle of a robbery. I could almost hear the cops now.... 'Nobody move.... Everything you say can and will be used against you in court!'

The tink of breaking glass brought be back to earth.

"Oops."

Then there was the hard slap of a thin hunk of glass falling and striking the floor. I winced.

The neighbors dogs barked. "Charley, QUIET!!!" my neighbor hollered. That only made Charley bark more. I shook my head. At least I was getting into my house, however destructive the process.

"Well that'll need fixing..." Dad said. "I'll go unlock the front door for you."

I cantered to the front yard, waiting anxiously by the door. A moment later, Dad appeared and let me in.

"Well, it could have been worse... Right?" Dad asked, desparately looking for consolance.

"Yeah. We could have been arrested for trying to break into our own house. You could have accidently stepped on a mysteriously poisonous garden snake when you stepped down into that hole. We could have found a spare key by the back door as soon as you broke the window..."

"ENOUGH. Go take your shower."