Locked Out
I found a contest that has such a neat prize! Deb from Just A Mom’s Take On Things is giving away two Schlage Electronic Locks in a contest that ends on 07/05/08 at 11:59 est. To enter you need to leave your best “locked out” story on her blog, on the contest announcement. I will be leaving my story there, but I also thought I’d share it with you.
Way back when, from January 1987 until sometime around 1993, my hubby and I lived at my Mom and Dad’s house. Before my Grandma died we lived in a room off the back of the house. After Grandma died we lived in the downstairs apartment that had previously been Grandma’s. Because he wasn’t family and because it takes a long time to build trust with my family, hubby didn’t have a key to my parents house. It typically wasn’t an issue because we were almost always together. He didn’t even drive at that time, so whenever he came and went he was with me. One night he decided he wanted to go to the local bar for a few drinks. I was annoyed with him for one reason or another, so I went out on my own with a few friends. I came in a couple of hours later and he wasn’t home. Back then it wasn’t unheard of for him to wind up at a friends and stay out really late or even all night once in a while. After two more hours of wondering where he was and worrying I fell asleep. In the middle of the night I was awakened by the door. I made my way up the stairs to the foyer, arriving at about the same time as my parents did at the top of the stairs. It’s never good to wake them in the middle of the night. At that point it hadn’t dawned on me that hubby wasn’t home. My parents didn’t know hubby wasn’t home. Dad decided to answer the persistent person at the door. He undid the deadbolt and much to our surprise we saw two police officers and my hubby. It seems that hubby had arrived home a half hour or so before but saw the downstairs was dark. He’d tapped on our bedroom window but I hadn’t heard him. He did not want to wake up my parents or my baby brothers (toddlers at the time). So, he decided he’d climb into our apartment through the downstairs living room window. At that time a policecar happened to be doing a routine patrol of our neighborhood. One of the officers saw a man starting to climb into a window, so he called for backup and got out to apprehend the man he thought was a burglar. Hubby was surprised when the police officer pulled him down from the window by his ankles. He tried to explain that he lived there and the policeman asked why he wasn’t using his key. He told the policeman he didn’t have one. By now the second policecar arrived on the scene. They asked my hubby for id, but he didn’t have any because he didn’t have a driver’s license. He asked them to please let him finish going inside so he could get his wife who would vouch for him. They were suspicious, rightly so. They told him they were going to the door. He begged them not to do that, because he didn’t want my parents woken up and thinking badly of him. They told him it was that or jail. So they rang the bell, explained they’d found this man trying to break in and asked if we knew him. Dad said hubby lived there and all was ok. The policemen went on their way. My folks were good sports about it, although hubby was pretty miffed the police didn’t believe him. He got a key to the house not long after that.
If this had all happened these days there wouldn’t have been a problem. Hubby’s phone has a built in GPS so I could’ve found out where he was before I went to bed and just called him there.
Filed Under: Contests • Family • House and home
