It started like an ordinary Friday evening. I finished work and walked home, looking forward to a relaxing night, thinking I would put the baseball game on while I folded and put away clean laundry. My helper comes on Fridays, so I would come home to a clean house and a drying rack full of clothes. And then I went to put my key in the door.
I should back up. My front door has always annoyed me greatly. Most doors in my apartment complex have a door lock and dead bolt. Mine doesn't have a deadbolt, but instead it has a metal gate/screen door that has the potential to be padlocked shut. My landlord thinks it keeps me safer. I think it's ugly, and it gets in the way. I call it The Stupid Door. One of the worst things about The Stupid Door, and it's a bit hard to understand this without seeing it in action, is that if you leave your key in the lock and push the door and Stupid Door open simultaneously, The Stupid Door will move across the lock in a such a way that it bends your key or worst case scenario, break it off in the lock. You have to remove your key from the lock before pushing them open, or just reach through The Stupid Door to push the big door open before opening The Stupid Door.
I've bent a few keys in it in my day, and two years ago when people were staying here over the summer, one broke off in the lock. But at that point, the door is open, since it happens as you walk in. They called a locksmith, the door knob was replaced, no big deal.
Which brings me back to today when I arrive home and go to put my key in the lock and discover it has a broken off key in it.
I knock because I assume that even though my helper's shoes aren't outside the door, she must still be there if the key is broken, right? Wrong. I frantically start calling her, my landlord, and my friend- just in case I need a place to sleep tonight. No one answers, though I do hear back from my friend quickly so I know at least they are home. I eventually get through to my helper, who speaks rapid fire Thai at me, of which I understand roughly 10%. She arrives back 5 minutes later and tells me that she didn't realize what had happened until I called and told her. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt because I know she's not the most observant person in the world, as evidenced by some clean-but-not-so-clean issues I've had with her lately, but I'm really not sure how you can break a key in a lock and not notice.
At any rate, I'm in a bind, and she feels bad. I post a picture of my door knob pickle to a community Facebook page in hopes that someone will know something about picking locks, or breaking into Parkland apartments, or at least the number for a good locksmith. Meanwhile, my next door neighbor has a couple chaangs (maintenance guys, workers, technicians, etc) working at her place and my helper asks one of them to help. He comes over to take a look, poor sap.
For the next 45 minutes he tries to pick the lock, break the knob, drill holes in the knob and chisel/pry the knob out of the door. None of it is successful, in part because, you guessed it, The Stupid Door is in the way and they can't get to the door knob well. The entire time, I'm standing there quickly melting into a puddle of sweat in my work clothes while my helper frets about. The building guard comes up to see what's going on since he can see what we're doing on the security camera. He hasn't got any brilliant ideas either, at least as far as I can tell, since I haven't studied a word of Thai in 18 months and don't understand anything anyone is saying.
After about a hour, the chaangs (another guy from next door has now joined us, and the neighbor comes out from time to time to try and help) and the guard communicate to me via charades that they think our best bet is to drill a large hole in the door and reach in and unlock it that way. But they want to be really sure that I know what they are doing and give the okay before they do it. Truth be told, I had no idea if that was the best plan and had no one to bounce the idea off. My landlord was still not answering her phone and no one around me spoke English. I know nothing about locks and nothing about what to do in such a situation. So I took deep breath, nodded, and gave the okay to drill.
At this point, though very frustrated, I'm also slightly glad that it's this hard to break into my apartment. Maybe I don't need that deadbolt after all.
Ten minutes, a drill, and a hammer later, we make it through the door. The chaang reaches through the door but the inner part of the knob is no longer intact so it won't unlock.
I reach through and try- no luck. After much hammering and banging we eventually get it done and the door swings open.
End of story? Nope.
We make it in the door and straight away my helper starts cleaning up the pieces of lock and door and piles of saw dust. I go next door and pay the guy for his help. When I get back, my helper closes the door to sweep behind it. And then she realizes. A piece of the lock is still in the door, and now it's locked shut. With no door knob. And no way out.
She starts panicking. Oddly enough, I'm not overly worried. If there is one thing I have learned from being caught in bad/strange/whatever situations, it is that they always end somehow. I grab my IKEA toolbox and start trying to pry the bit of lock out, hoping my helper doesn't have a meltdown. She calls her family and tells them she's locked in on the 6th floor and can't get out.
A bit earlier, I received a phone call from a kind friend/neighbor who had seen my post on the Facebook page and wanted to make sure I had found help and was getting in. At the time we were nearly in, but I was still grateful for his kindness in checking. Now though I called him back and told him the situation. Within minutes he was outside my door with better tools than I what I had, talking with me through the hole in the door, and working to get the bit of lock out. Which he did. We were free.
After he left my helper apologized profusely, while sobbing and hugging me. I really think she thought she'd be here all night.
And now, a piece of paper covers the holes while all the inside bolts are done, and The Stupid Door is latched shut. I feel plenty secure for tonight, and tomorrow I will get a padlock and finally make use of the padlock option on The Stupid Door.
A different chaang came just now with my landlord, declared the large Hulk-like hole completely unnecessary and will get a new door this weekend and install in on Monday morning. While I had no trouble holding it completely together (and even say a few mai bpen rai's) through the entire ordeal, I definitely lost it after my landlord and the new chaang left. These are the moments when I just want to live in a country where I understand people, where I know how the system works, where my parents or brothers or uncles are just a phone call away. But instead I'm here, in the middle of a circus, sometimes flourishing and sometimes floundering.
