That night, Carson went to a dinner in Valenciennes that was held for the assistants at his school. He wasn’t getting back until pretty late, but I kept the keys in case I had to go to the store or escape a fire or something like that. When Carson called me at 1am to let him in, I opened the window, threw him the keys, and immediately went back to bed.
Several seconds later, I received yet another call from Carson, informing me that the lock was jammed and I needed to let him in from the inside. He then proceeded to try to throw the keys back through the window of our second-story apartment. It was a Saturday night, so there were tons of people passing by and observing our struggle, which I imagine was both confusing and awesome to behold. Eventually, the key made it back into the apartment. I walked down to the front door, put the key in the lock, and...it continued to be jammed. Not sure why we were so sure it would work on one side if it was jammed on the other.
Although there was only a door between us, it became quickly evident that unless we could find a forklift to get Carson through the window, he would be sleeping elsewhere. Luckily, Carson’s younger teacher friend that drove him to Valenciennes earlier that night happily agreed to take him in. Problem solved, sort of! We would just wait until the next day to call the candle shop manager (we had decided he definitely broke the door and that this was his fault entirely) and tell him to fix our door.
To my surprise, the front door was open the next morning when I went downstairs the next day to assess the situation. I reasoned that candle manager man called a locksmith early that day so as to not inconvenience the people living above him. How nice!
The rest of Sunday went by normally, and when it came time to cook dinner I asked Carson to run out and get some ingredients. The candle shop was closed at this point, and somehow, our door was once again magically jammed.
How?? Did we enter some parallel universe (or crappy Disney movie) where doors are sealed when the clock strikes closing time and we are consequently confined to the highest room of the tallest tour by a man who sells whimsical cupcake-shaped candles for a living?
CURSE YOU, CANDLE SHOP MAN...Because of you my stir-fry must go eggless.
I had work the next morning, and I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t be able to get there on time. Then, randomly, the candle shop manager came back when Carson was downstairs trying to make the door work.
According to Carson, the candle man came in and said that it was his fault—he had hired a new employee and forgot to tell them to only turn the lock once, not twice. With his own key, he then showed Carson that everything worked and the problem was resolved.
Ideally, we would have also tried our key before the manager left again, but that would have made things too easy. Carson came upstairs to deliver the good news and we carried on with our night.
On Monday morning, I got up early to go to work only to find that the door, yet again, was not a fully functioning door. And of course, we didn’t ask the manager for his number the night before because sometimes we just aren’t so good at things. The shop didn’t open until 10:30, so I immediately called my mentor professor to explain the situation and apologize. I was half expecting skepticism at my ridiculous story, but since she is full-blown French, she just thought it was hilarious and pretty standard Monday fare.
After informing my teachers that I wouldn’t be able to get to school until after lunch, I embarked on the most intense Facebook creeping session of my life. I scarily was able to find the candle shop manager in less than 20 minutes, and asked him to come to the apartment ASAP. Also, at this point, I was more convinced than ever that this was all his evil doing.
The doorbell rang shortly after and I gleefully skipped downstairs, thinking it was the manager and that he finally was also locked out and we weren’t crazy. I greeted him by screaming at the very thick door.
Me: HELLO! YOU CAN'T OPEN THE DOOR EITHER NOW? NOW DO YOU AGREE THAT IT'S JAMMED??
French person: What?
Me: *Realizing it is not the candle shop manager* Oh...I CAN’T OPEN THE DOOR...it’s...LOCKED.
French person: ...WHAT?
Me:...right...the DOOR is JAMMED
French person: ...OKAY?
Me: So...WHO ARE YOU?
French person: The POST OFFICE
...Really? The very VERY first time that we had ever been home when a package came, and I could not open the door to obtain it. I could literally see the outline of the box... it was so close...again, CURSE YOU, CANDLE SHOP MAN.
The post office man left and I put what I knew would be yet another future struggle (acquiring a package) at the back of my mind for the time being.
Later, when the manager finally arrived, I demanded he show me how he was opening the door. He did so without any issue and then tried my key, which continued to have no influence on the door whatsoever. Then...it all became clear. Our key was broken (maybe or maybe not as a result of throwing it back and forth through a second story window...) and the whole time I had been blaming this poor candle salesmen for my own dumbassery.
Also, naturally, it couldn’t be the easily replaceable keys to the middle door or to our own door that broke; it had to be the giant security key that only has three existing copies and is illegal to remake.
I had to go to school to catch my last three classes of the day, so I left Carson in charge of solving the key dilemma. I suggested he go to a key shop to see if they could fix it through some welding voodoo and then call our landlord when that inevitably failed.
I was pretty stressed out all day, thinking that we would have to plan our comings and goings based on when the candle shop was open until our landlord came at the end of December, but then—for the first time ever in France—there was a plot twist that actually worked in our favor. When Carson called the landlord (surprise! wielding voodoo is not actually a thing), he just nonchalantly was like: “Oh, well you can just use the key to your terrace for the front door. It’s the same key.”
I’m not an architect or a door officianato, but this seemed like a very weird design: the terrace on the top floor that is connected only to our apartment has the same lock as the front door? Even if that’s entirely normal, we were confused as to why our landlord wouldn’t have maybe mentioned that this whole time we had two keys and could have been coming and going without planning around one another to such great lengths....In any case, it’s a moot point because we are once again down to one key.
Luckily, this incident was yet again overshadowed by a wonderful package received from a family member. Dad’s package was magical (seriously, he sent really thin cookies and not even one was broken. This was almost certainly the work of some higher force (read: Santa)) and without a doubt made my week. Of course, to get the package I had to pay a 23 euro tax (apparently customs just picks packages 100% at random and then taxes them random amounts....I was also skeptical of this explanation until about 6 different French people confirmed that that was the way it worked). I am now convinced that French customs=the bureaucratic Grinch. Like really, customs, you’re going to make me buy my own Christmas present back from you?
Anyway, it was totally worth it because of the awesomeness of the package contents. Thanks again, Dad!
In other news, Carson and Will finally saw Star Wars. This did not stop them from talking about it endlessly as I hoped it might.
In other other news, we are officially on Christmas break!! I’m not sure when vacation starts for people with real jobs...but I assume it’s at least soon-ish. In any case, it’s the weekend, so happy pre-Christmas break everyone! (Pictures to come eventually).
No comments:
Post a Comment