Today’s Vox question is, “What's the story behind a time when you got locked out?”

I don’t recall ever having been locked out of my own house but I have a funny story about getting locked out of my parents’ crib. They were on vacation and I was dogsitting; at the time their dogs were Fudge, a giant Golden Retriever and the coolest person I’ve ever known, and Smidgen, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Everything was fine until one Saturday morning when I went out to get their newspaper. Fudge stood up on his back paws to watch out of the glass in the front door and see what I was doing. That door had a latch-lock and before I’d cleared the porch I heard an ominous -click-. Straight out of a sitcom, Fudge had locked me out via a wayward front paw.

I wasn’t bothered and went around to the back door. My parents live way, w-a-y, W-A-A-A-Y out in the sticks and never lock their doors. Too bad I’d been frightened by a strange noise during the night and flipped the inside lock on the back door, one of those locks with a long hook that flips over a ball bolted to the door frame like one usually finds on hotel rooms. D’oh!

Undeterred, I wandered next door to my grandparents’ house, hoping they were home because I knew they had a spare set of keys and could let me in the front. They were home! Unfortunately, they were growing older and neither of them could hear well so they had their television turned up REALLY LOUD. I rang the bell, I pounded on their back door, I pounded on the front door, I yelled for them, I leapt repeatedly as high as I could and attempted to swat the window of the room in which they were sitting. Nothing.

Inspired, I returned with an idea! I'd call the grandparents on my car phone! Except that this incident took place back when car phones were actually installed inside one's car, and my car had automatic locks which were...locked. My keys, and my spare keys, were inside the house.

I went back around front and tried jiggling the front door. I circled the house and tried various windows. I tried sticking my arm into the back door, closing the door as far as I could with my arm smashed inside and attempting to disengage the lock. I roamed the perimeter of the house trying to decide which broken window would cause the least damage and looking for a weapon with which to break it. The entire time I was doing this, Fudge and Smidgen were following me from room to room, looking out at me from various windows in this puzzled doggy way, the expression on their faces clearly saying, “Why are you OUT THERE? There’s outside out there! Come back in and play with us!”

I looked around the carport and back porch for an implement of destruction, hoping to find something with which I could pick or jimmy the lock on the front door. After a long, long search I found ONE screwdriver, most of the tools being locked up tight in my dad's machine shop - to which I had keys, but they were hanging on a keyboard in the kitchen. When I tried the screwdriver on the front door, however, it was too wide to fit into the lock or the doorframe. GAH! Next I tried cajoling Fudge through the door, where he was watching me with that “what’s your problem?” look on his face, but although he would obligingly stand up and put his paws against the door as many times as I asked, I couldn’t make him understand that I needed him to unlock it.

I stomped next door to the grandparents’, pounded and yelled with renewed fervor. Still no joy.

I returned to my parents’ front porch, jiggled the doorknob some more and sat down on their porch, disgusted. I had no better plan than to stalk my grandparents until they tried to leave for church the following morning. As I was sitting there, my eye was drawn to the kitchen window. The UNLOCKED kitchen window! Success! Or at least semi-success, because while the window itself was unlocked, the storm window was not. Also, the kitchen window was up fairly high and accessible only by climbing, walking across, and standing on a 2'x4' that was the porch railing - which I was really looking forward to trying, because as those of you who know me personally will attest, grace and balance are two of my finest points. (The sarcasm. It burns.)

With no other options, I climbed the porch rail and teetered at the kitchen window, using the screwdriver to remove the screen and pry away the storm window far enough to slide the catches in far enough to raise the window. Doing this from a backwards angle standing on a narrow railing was quite fun and enjoyable. It was touch and go there for a while but finally I got the window raised, fully expecting that at this juncture my grandmother would appear behind me, demand to know what I thought I was doing and startle me so badly that I fell off the railing, but that didn’t happen.

Then I started to climb through the rather small kitchen window. This window is right over the double sink, so I had to dodge knives and various stabby-type implements sitting in the drying rack and breakable dishes sitting in the other side. I conked myself hard in the head with the potted plant Mom has in a macrame hanger over the sink, so I was having to hold that aside, dodge the dishes, try not to fall out the window, try not to fall into the sink and still achieve forward progress. The dogs were both in the kitchen watching this spectacle, Fudge with the most perplexed “what in hell are you doing?” look on his face. I know Smidgen was thinking, “Why don’t you use the freakin’ DOOR?!? That’s what Mom & Dad do, you stupid girl!”

Precariously balanced by the palms of my hands on the strip of counter in front of the sink, my torso stretched across the sink to the window, with my legs and nether regions dangling outside the window, no longer able to grasp for purchase on the porch rail with my toes, I considered my options. It was at this point that I decided that a career in burglary was out of the question. I saw little I could do besides fall onto the floor, try not to hit my head and hope I didn’t break any bones, but I couldn’t fling myself forward because Fudge, worried about my mental state, was now standing front paws on counter and licking my face. He wouldn’t move.

Trapped, I was trapped, trapped with my butt hanging out my parents’ front window. For the first time in, oh, forever, I was glad they lived way, w-a-y, W-A-A-A-Y out in the sticks. I crawled myself over to the right a little, bruising my hip against the window frame, and snagged a bag of potato chips off the counter. Throwing a handful of chips inward to distract Fudge and Smidgen, I seized the moment and levered the rest of my body inside, overbalanced on the two inches of counterspace I had to work with and landed hard on the cold tile floor. Bruised from knee to boobs yet flushed with success, it was then that I realized I’d left the damn newspaper outside.