Locked Outside

Okay so on Saturday I went to this leadership conference at Cottonwood High school with all of the officers and SBO’s from Davis High. It was way fun and crazy. Imagine about 200 kids who all love to be the center of attention, and have more self confidence than Matt Smith. It was insane! Everyone yelled, clapped, danced, and sang the entire time. By the time I got home I was pretty hot, sweaty and exhausted! I was hot and sweaty because I drove home in this old non air conditioned Mercedes that can’t go faster than 65 miles per hour. I was in the car with two loud, crazy, and freakish senior boys. (how do you feel about that dad?) Anyway I was pretty tired when I came home.

When I got home my sister in law Kanien wanted me to go with her to Salt Lake to feed Grandma. My brother Jon and sister in law Kanien are babysitting us while my parents are in Europe. They live with my 100 year old great grandma and take care of her. Well, while they are here they have to go home every morning and night to wake grandma up and feed her breakfast, then feed her dinner and put her to bed. She is pretty helpless and she can’t do any of this herself. Anyway so were going down so Salt Lake to feed Grandma. When we go to the house I was asleep to be rudely aroused by a cry of anguish from Kanien. “LIZZY, I forgot the key again!” Earlier this week Kanien forgot the key to her house when going to feed Grandma. She did this because she has been driving a different car meaning a different keychain. When she forgot the key last time she had to call my Grandpa, and he gave her two spare keys.

Calling Grandpa again was out of the question. Obviously. We were not going to face the embarrassment of that! I solemnly told Kanien, “We’ve gotta break in!” My Great Grandma’s house is about 50 years old, so it has these old windows that have this thing on the inside that you have to turn with all of the strength in you to get open. Actually first you have to unlock the window by lifting up the latch then they slowly open as you turn the little crank. I do not know how to explain it very well! We looked around the entire house and only one window was even unlocked. The window was a small basement window covered with spider webs, and this bush that had thorns on it. We kicked it for awhile then decided that is was useless.

We next started picking the lock. We decided that our best bet would be the basement door because it was only one of those push and turn doors. We tried a bobbie pin for hours pushing it this way, then the other way, up and down, right and left. Nothing worked. We then moved on to the little, tiny file in fingernail clippers. The result was the same. Kanien then called her dad who works in the military if he knew how to pick a lock. He told her that is was impossible without a lock picking kit. Having no such kit, we proceeded using the bobbie pin on the other doors in the house. We thought about unscrewing the window, but we didn’t have any tools. We were about to go when I said, “Kanien I think dad keeps a tool box in the trunk of the car.” We looked and I was right! There was a tool box in the emergency compartment inside the trunk.

Neither of us knowing what kind of tools to use, we took them all. We tried everything, but nothing worked or would fit. It was so depressing. Then Kanien found some knives in the backyard. You know how on the movies the bad guys just slide a knife up and down the door and it magically opens? Well, yeah, that doesn’t exactly work in real life. I don’t know exactly when, but Kanien had called my Grandpa to see if he would bring us a key, but he and my Grandma were both gone. So we had three options, break in, wait until my grandpa came home, or drive back to Kaysville, get a key and drive back to SLC again. “Lizzy let’s just go home.” Kanien said. “Okay, but can we please just try that window one more time?” I begged. We walked over to the window and tried to kick it some more, but then Kanien remembered, “Lizzy we can’t kick it. We have to pull it out.” After trying to pull it open with our hands we got the knives and started to pry it open. Guess what? It came open! But only about an inch, and that inch was only on the top. The bottom part wouldn’t open because that is where the thing we had to turn was. We pushed sticks in the windows to keep it open. Then while we were both laying on our bellies Kanien pulled on the window while I stuck my hand inside and tried to reach the thing we had to twist. If I had, had a arm the size of a six year old, this might have worked.

Our next attempt involved a stick and lots of pulling. I stuck a long stick inside the small opening and tried to push the little twisty thing with the stick. Kanien had to pull the window open as far as she could while I tried pushing with the stick. I didn’t know which way to push it so I periodically tried both. “Wait Lizzy.” Kanien said, “let’s think about this. Righty tighty, Lefty loosey. Okay push up.” Push up I did. I pushed, and pushed and pushed! The problem was the stick kept slipping off the dang thing I was trying to push. I stuck my arm in further so I would be able to have better control over the stick. Kanien pulled harder. “CRACK” The window had cracked. It didn’t shatter it just cracked the bottom pane. I let out a moan, “Kanien, we are so close.” Lizzy let’s call grandpa one more time and if he isn’t there let’s go home. We called grandpa and he wasn’t there, but Grandma was. She wasn’t mad. I don’t think Grandma’s can get mad at their grand daughters. All she did was laugh. Well, all I can say, is I’m glad he could laugh about it.

Still laughing she gave two sweaty, grass stained, and distraught girls a key to the house. When I got to the house I ran to the HATED window and tried to turn the knob. “KANIEN!!!!! WE WERE PUSHING THE WRONG WAY!” I am not even kidding! The whole time we were pushing the wrong way. That was almost the most depressing thing that ever happened to me. It wasn’t exactly the fact the window broke that made me so mad. It was the fact that we had failed. We both tried to hard, and in the end we failed when we were so close to succeeding. Oh well, it made a good blog.