Last Saturday morning I couldn’t find my keys.

It was 6:15 in the morning, cold and black outside, but I had to get to 7 am indoor rowing practice.

My keys belong in a dish by the front door, but when I didn’t find them there I didn’t worry.  Usually when they’re not in the dish, I find them in my purse, a coat pocket, or in the pocket of the pants I wore the day before.

But this morning they weren’t in any of the usually suspected locations.

I searched my dinning room table, the kitchen countertops, my desk, my bedroom.

No keys.

But I’d gone to a party the night before, and I unlocked the door to get in, so I knew the keys were in the house somewhere.

Turns out they weren’t.

In the house, I mean.

I was down by the front door, searching again in sheer desperation when for an unknown reason I tried to pull open the front door.

It wouldn’t budge.

This was strange.  I fiddled with the lock and pulled.

Nothing.

Not only could I not find my keys, now I couldn’t get out my own front door.

I’ve been locked out of my house before, but never locked in.

This was not the best start to the day.

To figure out what was going on with the door, I left through the garage and came around to the front door from the outside.

My keys were in the lock of the front door.

Apparently, after I’d unlocked the door the night before, I’d shut it behind me with the entire key ring still in the lock.  That was why I couldn’t open the door from the inside.

Keys in the front door all night.   That could’ve gone badly.

But all’s well that ends well.

Except this fiasco hadn’t ended quite yet.

Because when I pulled open the storm door, it wouldn’t budge!

That’s when I realized that the wad of keys on my keyring was jammed under the inner handle of the storm door.  So the keys were stuck inside the two doors—the storm door which I could not open from outside the house, and the main door which I could not open from inside the house.

This was a dilemma.

And it was still dark, still cold, and the minutes were ticking by until practice began.

I pulled and pushed on the storm door with no results. 

With a frustrated grunt, I went into the garage to see if I could find something to pry open the door.  I found a crowbar, but stopped myself.  I really didn’t want to spend this day finding someone to fix the door frame after I’d broken it apart.

But there was no other way.

Very gently, I started to pry the door open, and eventually, I moved it enough to release the handle from the keyring without destroying anything.

I freed the keys and headed for the boathouse, where I made the start of practice with seconds to spare.

And finally, all ended well.