Broken Key

Yesterday morning when I opened the back door of my Smoothie (aka 1988 Plymouth Reliant K) it felt kinda...sticky. It was cold as all hell and the handle would pop from open to shut, no real give in between.

I shrugged, threw my laptop in the back seat and the shut the door...

*Wham*

It didn't close, but rather sit there ajar.

I tried again. *Wham* *Wham*

And again. *Wham* *Wham* *Wham*

I'll be honest, part of me threw it against the car a few times because I was so damn frustrated.

But that wasn't the bad part. The bad part came when I tried to correct this problem myself. You see, doors latch via thick plastic hooks that engage when the door is pushed close. Looking at the inside of the door, I could see the hook struck in the "engaged" position.

I tried to move it with my fingers, no luck.

I thought of how I was going to drive to work with the door not latching. For a brief, delirious moment, I actually thought about tying a string from the other back door to this one in order to keep it closed.

But I got an idea: What is small, thin and metal that can fit right in there to pop the hook out of its engaged position?

Well, based on the title you can see where this is going. I gave it just a little bit of downward pressure and...

*SNAP* The broken piece went scurrying on the pavement. I picked it up and looked at the quarter inch of metal missing from the end of my car key. Not the key that opens the trunk, nooOOoo, but the one required to actually start the car.

So, after this horrible turn of events, I threw the door against the car a few more times (*Wham* *Wham* *Wham*) and thought about what I could do.

All of that Whamming brought Ericka's attention and she was up and out of bed despite the early hour. I showed her the broken key. We agreed that the car key was kinda the worst tool I could've ever chosen to undo that hook.

While I was inside Googling my face off, Ericka fixed the latch with a pair of scissors. I didn't even realize it until she told me and then explained how such mechanisms worked.

Did I mention I'm no good with cars? Because, I mean...damn.

Off to the locksmith's place I go. Creatively named Oak Ridge Locksmith, I went about explaining my perdicament. The guy asked for the other piece of the key, and using those two components he made another one just like it (including the black plastic that covered the end) in mere minutes. I got another house key made to boot, hell, I didn't even have to take it off the keyring.

I was silently ecstatic that the key at least broke off onto the pavement and not inside the car. Now that would've been painful.

So $4.95 later, I had two keys I desperately needed and sure enough they worked perfectly.

And if this happens again, I think I'll just ask my wife before using any highly important metal objects to pry things apart. She's better at that "mechanical" stuff.

A grey sky, a bitter sting
A raincloud, a crane on the wing