Tim stopped by last night to call a locksmith after he locked himself out of his apartment. He stepped out onto his patio to get something and unthinkingly swept the patio door closed behind him, realizing as soon as he heard the click of the latch that he was not going to be getting back in any time soon. The front door was locked and he didn’t have his keys on him, so he made the fifteen-minute walk to our house to see what he could do about getting in.

And I tell this story not to embarrass Tim, although I suppose it does just that. Sorry, T-Dawg. My purpose, though, was to tell you that, if there are people out there determined to get into your home, the lock you’ve got on your front door is going to do exactly squat to stop them. It’ll surely lock you out, but to somebody who knows locks it’s a momentary delay. The locksmith that we called came in a van stocked with lots of very impressive gear, and he carried a big bag full of tools into the apartment building, but after eyeballing the lock on Tim’s door he took out a little wallet chock full of what looked like dental picks, just like they do in the movies, shoved the pointy ends of two or three of them into the lock on after the other and, after jiggling them around a bit in what did not look like a very delicate manner, he put them all away, jammed a screwdriver into the keyhole, gave it a twist, and the door swung open. Took him less than a minute. I got the feeling that a much more expensive lock might have occupied as much as five or ten minutes of his time.