Keys

If you can't laugh at yourself, life is going to seem a whole lot longer than you'd like. ~Sam,Garden State

Here's a good way to meet a neighbor: get locked out of your car!

Yes, just a few months after earning a gold medal in House Key Misplacement, I have now also soared to the top of the standings in its sibling event: the Car Key Toss-and-Forget. In my infinite wisdom, I dug my apartment keys out of my bag, threw my car keys in the bag, and decided to walk around the car so I wouldn't have to drag the bag, already bulging with books and magazines, across myself and my seat. Yet I proceeded to, in one swift sequence, open my door, power-lock the doors, exit the car, and then slam the door shut. Oops.

I am left standing with three keys on a ring, and unfortunately, none of them corresponds to my Honda. Anything that could help in this situation - my cell phone; my wallet, containing my mom's AAA card, which she just gave me today before I left; a box of tissues maybe - is conveniently locked in the car. Certain four letter words reverberate in my head.

After a few seconds of staring forlornly at my car keys, sitting mockingly on top of everything in my bag, I walk up to my apartment, thinking that I can call my parents or a locksmith with my roommate's cell phone. (Like many apartment dwellers today, I would presume, we don't have a land line.) It begins to feel like my unlucky day when I discover that my roommate, who has always been home when I've returned from home on Sunday evenings, is out. I grab the phone book - and my apartment keys! - and head out to do some neighbor-greeting.

It is a little strange that I do not know the names of any of my neighbors when I have been living here since January. In college, and particularly as an RA, I had gotten used to introductions around move-in time and seeing faces become familiar in the hallways and communal bathrooms. Move-in this time occurred quietly, without fanfare, and it must have been weeks before I even spied someone besides my roommate leaving the apartment building. Sure, I knew neighbors existed, as I heard TVs through the walls and smelled dinners cooking when I returned from work, but the open door suggestion doesn't quite hold for apartment life. I'd try it if my roommate didn't have two cats who tend to enjoy escaping... and if our door opened to something other than the hallway to the living room. Plus, here, we are all set in our work routines, which makes it more difficult to randomly run into each other.

I wonder if "real life" will be like this too. I think this might be an isolated situation, as I am essentially subletting and don't truly feel like I live here at all. Rather, I seem to only be using this space to eat and sleep (and watch TV), while my real life is held in abeyance Monday through Friday and comes out only on weekends when I go home. I hope that when I do find an apartment to call home, or at least home #2, I will feel like I am permanent enough, and that I belong enough, to engage with the people around me.

But back to today's story. Two doors down, there is a TV on. The owner of said TV lets me in and gives me her cell phone to use. I call the locksmith with the biggest ad first. "I won't be able to get to it now," he tells me. "It'll be 60 minutes before I can." Four or five more tries leads to four or five answering machines. Finally, I call my parents to see if one of them can make the hour-long drive to deliver another car key. As expected, my mom reacts with loud, incurable laughter. She is laughing at me, though if I weren't standing in a stranger's apartment, I'm pretty sure I'd be laughing too. It is decided that she will call AAA to see if they can get someone here faster than it would take my dad to drive here. I will wait for her to call me back, at my neighbor's cell phone, with the verdict.

Semi-related to verdicts, I learn from my 10-minute stay with my neighbor that she is an ADA for Philadelphia. She doesn't look old enough to be out of law school. I also learn that she is a Penn State alum, and I wonder later if she's the owner of the car with the Nittany Lion sticker I always see in the parking lot. We make some small talk about PSU, PSU football, PSU residence halls (yes, the Res Lifer in me has been indoctrinated enough that I don't refer to them as dorms) - did you know that Simmons used to be all-female? - and then I hear from my mom that someone from AAA will come sometime in the next 45 minutes. Whew. I head back to my apartment to wait - I've got a good view of the parking lot from my window - after thanking my neighbor again. It isn't until I get back to my apartment that I realize I didn't even get her name.

In the end, a guy from AAA - I got his name: Stewart - comes about 10 minutes later, pops a lock with seemingly little effort, which makes me realize exactly how vulnerable my car with its pull-up locks is, and schools me in how to turn off the ensuing alarm (why, exactly, I thought turning the car on would do the trick is a question for the ages, though there is solid evidence that I tend to lose my levelheadedness in stressful situations).

The bright side to all of this is that I am pretty certain that I will never again lock myself out of my car. I am a firm believer in the idea that a mistake must happen once so that one can learn from it and never make it again. And so far, I've managed to leave to go grocery shopping with the right purse (meaning whichever purse my apartment keys happen to be in) every single time since the one time I didn't in early February, which is proof enough for me.

Life lessons here: Always check and double-check that you have your keys. Join AAA. Take pity on strangers asking to use your phone.