Locked out

Well this is not the first time, and it happened many years and moons away when I was just a boy. But to have it happen to me again was rather out of the ordinary and that strange feeling of deja vu was overwhelming. Tonight, I was locked out of my own place.

It happened that I thought I was simply doing my friend a favor when I offered to rent the two unused rooms in my apartment to his company. The tenants are his employees, here on a trip for training prior to the launch of the franchise they are bringing into China. I was out the entire night and took a cab home from my girlfriend’s place at around 11:30pm. It was a nice, cool Saturday night and I was happily humming away as I inserted the key into the keyhole, when I discovered with growing despair that I was unable to turn the key. With disbelief, I tried another time, and a couple of times more, just to make sure that it was happening. Incredulous, I began to press frantically on the doorbell and dialled my home number just to create a din, hoping that one of the tenants will wake up and open the door. Then with a horrified realisation, I remembered that the phone was in my room and the door was closed shut. So any ringing sound it made would have been muffled and soft.

After several minutes of pressing in vain, and realising I was wearing out the batteries of the doorbell, I stopped and pondered. I called my friend. His reaction was that of disbelief and we quickly worked out plans in order to wake the entire neighbourhood. In the end, he offered his place for the night. Me, the landlord was to put up at my tenant’s boss’s apartment. What irony.

We arranged to meet at Serangoon Gardens where the famous supper place – Chomp Chomp is, and have a good laugh and some food. In the end, part of my brain that was still working and not numbed from the experience took control. Part of my other head spoke up as well. I went to bunk over with my girlfriend.

How did this happen? You see, my front metal grate had a little knob on the inside that allows someone in the apartment to lock out unwanted intruders. Without a very small hand or the appropriate tools, a normal adult will find it almost impossible to turn this knob from the outside. I did not tell the tenants about the knob, feeling that they will not touch anything that they do not know about. How wrong was I. Apparently, Murphy dictates that even things that you do not plan on happening, will happen.