Equinimity Test

Posted by James

Have you ever noticed times in your life when reality keeps throwing a particular type of unpleasant event at you, like a theme? That happened to me over a few days last week. The theme for me was getting locked out.

It started like this. On Wednesday last week (April Fools day as it turns out), I walked to my first day of work at the TU. I spent most of the day settling paperwork, meeting some of my new colleagues, and following up on my lost luggage (see previous post). On the way home, I stopped at Karstadt to do some grocery shopping since the fridge was completely empty. Karstadt is a department store that has groceries like Target in the US. I left Karstadt with a completely filled plastic grocery bag and a few items in my computer backpack. Since Karstadt doesn't carry fresh bread, I stopped by a backer and bought a loaf of multi-grain bread, putting it in a separate bag. With the grocery bag in one hand, the bread bag in the other, and the umbrella I had taken along in the morning because it looked like rain tucked under my left arm, I headed home.


Back at the apartment, I negotiated the 8 flights of stairs to reach the apartment with the two grocery bags tightly in grip and the umbrella tucked under one arm. Our apartment is in a building under historic preservation and has no elevator. We live on the 4th floor above the ground (3rd floor by German reckoning, since the first floor is always called the "ground floor") and each floor has two flights of stairs because the apartments have high ceilings. By the time I reached the apartment, I was ready to sit down and have a nice hot cup of tea.

I set the bags down on the floor. Grabbing the door handle, I opened the deadbolt lock on the top, then turned the key in the bottom lock and pressed on the handle (see picture of the door above). The latch on the bottom lock opened and the door opened a crack but then stuck. I pushed but no progress. I could see into the apartment through the crack. I removed the key and tried again. No luck. The door seemed to be stuck. Was reality pulling an April Fool's joke on me? What to do?

My phone rang. It was my brother-in-law wanting to know whether I was coming along with them for the 4 day Easter weekend to an island in the Baltic.

"Look, I don't think I can make it," I said, "My suitcase isn't here yet and so I don't have any warm cloths. And besides, at the moment, I'm locked out of my apartment. If I can't get in, I'll have to sleep on the doormat."

"You're what??" he replied in alarm.

I explained the situation and asked him for advice about what to do. He was silent for a moment.

"Why don't you try the key service?" he suggested.

Every German apartment building has the telephone number of a key service on the door, which you can call if you leave your keys inside the apartment and lock yourself out. That wasn't exactly my situation, but I figured it might work. I thanked him and wished him and my sister-in-law a pleasant vacation.

Then I ran downstairs and called the key service. They assured me that someone would be there within a half hour. I walked back up the stairs and sat down to wait. And wait. A half hour came and went and nobody appeared. I heard rustling in my neighbor's apartment. Could someone be there?  German locks are more complicated than American it seems, maybe my neighbor could help. I ran the bell and someone was indeed there. An elderly gentleman with grey hair and a grey beard opened the door. I explained the situation.

"Well, the locks open just fine but I can't seem to get the door open," I said, showing him the crack between the two doors.

"Let me have the keys," he said.

He walked over to the door, closed it completely, and relocked the deadbolt. Then he opened the deadbolt without pressing on the handle and unlocked the bottom lock. The door popped open!

"The trick is not to press on the door when you unlock it," he said.

I thanked him for his help, hauled the heavy grocery bags into the kitchen, and called the key service to cancel.

The next morning came Round 2. Up for breakfast around 7, I attempted to open the utensil drawer in the kitchen for a spoon to eat my musli but...it jammed and I could not get in. One of the utensils in the drawer had wedged up between the front inside of the drawer and the back, preventing the drawer from opening. I pulled on the handle but no luck. I peered into the crack between the drawer and the counter top, then stuck a bread knife and, when that didn't work, the butter knife that I had extracted the night before to try to jimmy whatever was jamming the drawer. To no avail. Opening the cabinet underneath, I looked at the bottom to see if any screws or anything were holding the drawer together or were part of the opening mechanism. I thought maybe I could unscrew the bottom or remove the whole drawer. Again no luck. Dried out duct tape along the sides of the drawer suggested maybe somebody had taken the bottom out at some point, but the tape was no longer fastened to the bottom, and the bottom was firmly fastened to the sides by means invisible. I sent my landlord an urgent email about the drawer, browsed the Web a bit, and then went to bed.

The next morning I had to eat my musli and yogurt using one of the large cooking spoons from the cooking utensil holder on top of the stove. That was a bit difficult but I managed it. I had an email from my landlord: try jiggling it. I figured I'd wait until evening since I needed to get to work. At the TU that afternoon, I found a couple plastic utensils in the coffee room and brought those home just in case jigglig didn't work. When I arrived back at the house, I went out to the kitchen, opened the cabinet under the drawer, and whacked the bottom a couple times.

Sure enough, that worked. But it still wouldn't open all the way. A short knife was still wedged up between the back of the drawer and the back side of the countertop. I reached around through the open part of the drawer and dislodged the offending knife. The drawer was stuffed with too many utensils and cutlery. That knife and four others were banished from the drawer and into the cooking utensil holder on the stovetop. The drawer seems now to work just fine.

And round three. On Thursday, the departmental secretary, gave me a key for my office  She warned me that the key had a small battery in it that sometimes went dead and if that should occur, I should let her know and she would have it replaced. I wondered at the time why a key needed a battery. Later I locked my office door and went down to lunch. After lunch, I came back up, inserted the key in the lock and turned. Nothing. It would not turn. I removed the key and tried again. No luck. Was the battery dead? The department sysadmin came by and I explained the situation.

"Did you wait a second or two before turning the key?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so. Why?" I replied.

"The key is electronic and it takes a couple seconds to sync up with the door. Try it again." he suggested.

So that's why it needed a battery, to keep people from turning it too quickly! I inserted the key into the lock and counted to four just to be sure, then turned the key. Success! I thanked the sysadmin* and sat down in my office.

The "locked out" theme seems to have played out for now, and I think I can say that I've passed the equanimity test, though I did end up wondering when I was locked out of the apartment what I would do with ten pounds of groceries and my umbrella if I had to sleep on the doormat.

* Note: for now, I am not going to use anybody's names in this blog. Germans are much more sensitive to privacy on the Internet than Americans. I could change people's names around and in the end I might do that but for now, I'll do the best I can without names.