When One Door Shuts...

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At some point in life, everyone does something foolish. It could be due to a lapse of judgement. Perhaps peer pressure is to blame. Sometimes, you just don't pay close enough attention to the matter at hand. Whatever the reason, you are left feeling like the world's biggest moron.

Last night, that was me.

Monday nights are fun. Returning to the office after a leisure-packed weekend is difficult for some, but I have The Bookworm quiz nights to look forward to. The Bookworm, a local coffee shop/bookstore (motto: Eat. Drink. Read) is a 2-minute bike ride from my apartment. I've spent many happy hours immersed in a fascinating historical title (okay, perusing the latest imported copy of Cosmo), sipping a fruit smoothie or savoring a good cup of java. The Bookworm houses over 20,000 English-language books for all ages; 300 RMB will get you a one-year membership and unlimited access to Beijing's largest foreign language lending library. It's quite a deal.

Monday nights are quiz nights. Jonny Champagne White, the effervescent host of the evening, selects four rounds of trivia with such themes as history, current events, geography, and literature. The evening begins with a page of pictures to identify- last week, it was hats. Cowboy, fez, fedora, burqa, they were all there. The last round is 10 songs; each group must identify the song title and the artist based on the first 15 seconds of the song. My team, Drambuie, (yes, named after the drink and no, I haven't tried it), does exceedingly well in some categories and completely bombs others.

Well, I digress.

I was happily gathering my trash bags together to take to the dumpster outside when I glanced at the clock and realized I was running late. In a mad dash, I flung my papers into my bag, tied up the trash bags, grabbed my coat, flipped open the lock on the inside of the door, and rushed outside, slamming the door behind me. I had gone down about two steps when I realized my keys were still in the lock on the other side of the door. Okay, no big deal. I have to use the keys to lock the door from the outside. I threw my things down, grasped the handle, and turned, expecting to grab my keys and be on my merry way.

Nope.

By some miracle, when I slammed the door shut, the ensuing vibration was just enough to jostle the keys to the left in the door, essentially locking me out. But, aha! After a couple of friends had locked themselves out of their apartments, I'd had the foresight to stick a spare key to my apartment in my work bag. Chuckling at my own cleverness, I withdrew the key, stuck it in the lock, and turned. What? The landing light had burned out, so I retreated down a floor to look more carefully at my key. Of course. I had grabbed the keys to my bedroom door instead of the front door. Now what? I sat down on the step, chin in hand, to ponder the situation and feel sorry for myself. It looked like I wouldn't be making it to quiz night after all.

As I gazed despondently around the dark landing, I noticed a small sliver of light shining underneath my next-door neighbors' door. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps (okay, got up off the floor) and knocked purposefully on their door. As soon as the door opened, my tough-girl resolve melted. In front of me stood the quintessential Chinese grandmother: silver hair pulled back in a slightly unkempt bun, dressed in leggings and a cotton sweater, and a kind face that peered back at me concernedly. Soon I was spilling my sob story- "Door....locked....keys....inside...what do I dooooo?" Ashamed as I am to admit this, that last question came out as a plaintive wail. I was missing quiz night, after all!

My new friend took charge. She ordered her middle-aged son to call the local police station to tell them I had locked myself out, got me a chair, and told me stay right where I was while she walked to the station to get help. Though I offered several times to go with her, she was firm in her insistence that I wait for her in front of my door. While she was gone, I kept myself busy by alternately kicking the door and pleading with it to open. No such luck.

After I'd definitively determined that I could neither kick nor will the door open, I was inspired to call my landlord. After a helpful discussion about my predicament (Landlord: you're locked inside your apartment?! Me: No, outside of it. Landlord: So what's the problem? Me: I can't get in. Landlord: You can't get out? Me: Never mind .) I resigned myself to waiting for my neighbor to return.

Finally, huffing and puffing, she made her way back up to our sixth floor landing. Apparently, I had to go to the police station to tell them what had happened in person. Didn't I want to do that in the first place?! But who am I to argue with Chinese logic? After assuring my neighbor over and over that I knew exactly where the local station was and thanking her profusely for her effort, I started down the twelve flights of stairs. I was halfway down when I was struck by a blinding flash of inspiration. Phone a friend! The millions of hours I'd spent watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? with my mom were finally paying off! Too bad I haven't retained any of the trivia from the show, as evidenced by the pity pitchers the quizmaster gifts our team with each week at quiz night.

Unfortunately for me, I had planned to charge my phone after quiz night, so I had less than one bar of power left. Great. I used that meager supply to call every friend I could think of who had been in the same situation. Surprisingly, there were many. I finally got two phone numbers of locksmiths- one shady and one recommended by the police. I went with the latter. After calling the legitimate locksmith agency, I settled onto the steps of my lobby to wait. In no time at all, a cheerful young man pulled up a noisy motorbike. We hiked back up to my apartment, where I explained the situation: wooden door, keys still in the lock inside the apartment, no spare. Zhen mafan! he jovially exclaimed. Translation: how troublesome! Or, this is going to take a lot of time and cost you a lot of money . Yep, you got that right.

After peering through the keyhole with a flashlight, he filled out a report and asked me to wait for a moment. Who, or what, were we waiting for? I got my answer a few minutes later. A uniformed policeman, together with a young apprentice, soon marched up the stairs. After checking my passport against his registration records (thank goodness I had it with me!), the policeman allowed the repairman to continue. I suppose he wanted to ascertain that I wasn't some young hooligan attempting to break into someone else's apartment.

His investigation finished, the repairman determined there was only one solution: he was going to whack the living daylights out of the handle, rip it out of the door, and replace it with a new doorknob. Since my keys were still in the lock on the other side of the door, picking the lock was not an option. It wouldn't budge. I swallowed hard, crossed my fingers, and gave the okay. Soon enough, he was wrenching the metal handle apart, taking care not to damage the surrounding wood. The metal frame around the handle splintered and soon lay in multiple pieces at our feet. On the plus side- my door was now open. Hooray.

This entire ordeal took about two-and-a-half hours from start to finish and cost me 420 RMB, or the equivalent of 62 dollars. I met my neighbors and learned they were kind people willing to help a strange foreigner. I proved to the local Chief of Police that I was not, in fact, a hooligan trying to steal from China. And perhaps the most valuable lesson of all:

I learned how to say 'moron' in Chinese.

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