The locksmith came to rekey my locks and fix my backdoor lock so the key doesn’t just spin in it.

You know how some people just instantly inspire you with confidence? Well, he wasn’t one of them. And it wasn’t just because he looked like he was about 17 years old, it was more than that. It was because he looked flummoxed right from the start.

He took one look at the back door lock and slowly said, “Oooh, I hate these things.” Then he stood there staring at it and shaking his head and looking helpless.

Finally he opened his tool box. What a mess. It’s okay if you or I have a messy toolbox (frankly, mine is a little yellow plastic basket), but a professional should have a well-organized toolbox that is an inspiration to you and me.

He rooted around in it for a few minutes. I got the impression he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, he was just hoping to see something that might inspire him.

“How the hell am I going to get that lock off?” he wondered, half to himself.

I kept knitting.

“I guess I could try with a screwdriver,” he offered, but he didn’t sound at all hopeful.

The screwdriver didn’t work.

“Maybe a file,” he said dubiously.

The file didn’t work.

“I could try drilling it,” he said pessimistically.

Drilling it didn’t work.

“Damn,” he said, “I broke my bit.”

He stared at the lock awhile longer, then tried the file again.

“Damn,” he said, “I don’t think you’re going to get that lock off today. I’m breaking all my tools. I just broke my file.”

“Try something else,” I suggested not-so-helpfully.

“I’ll go out to the truck and radio my boss,” he said, “Maybe he’ll have an idea.”

He returned a few minutes later.

“He had an idea,” he said, “Hit it with a hammer!”

“Ah yes,” I thought, “Why didn’t we think of that?”

He hit the lock with a hammer about 500 times, and eventually the lock succumbed.

“It’s kind of broken though,” he said sadly, “Pieces are falling out. I could try to rebuild it. But if I can’t, do you want me to replace it with another lock?”

“I think so,” I said, since the alternative would be to have no lock on my back door, and then I’d never be able to leave my house ever again.

Then he went out to the truck, leaving my door wide open, and returned about half an hour later.

“I rebuilt the lock,” he announced proudly, “I saved you $30!”

“Good work,” I said.

We worked in silence for a bit, him on his installing, me on my knitting.

“Tell me,” I said, “What’s involved in becoming a locksmith?”

“Oh, not much,” he replied, “There’s no courses or accredidation or union or anything. It’s just on-the-job training. But I’m a quick learner, so now they’ve got me doing house calls.”

“No accredidation?” I mused, “What about background checks, or security clearance?”

“Not really,” he said, “It’s up to the company. Some of the locksmiths where I work are bonded, but they didn’t even do a security check on me.”

Companionable silence ensued, while we both mulled over the implications of that.

“I guess that doesn’t make you feel any better, does it?” he said at last.

I smiled at him. “Well, at least you look honest,” I said.

In the end, when all was said and done, one lock was rebuilt, four locks were rekeyed, and I did actually feel safer. And it only cost $113.32, which I thought was very reasonable, considering it took him two hours and so many tools died in the process.

I’m way behind on everything. Here it is Thursday again, and I haven’t even blogged last Thursday’s Thursday Night Barbecue.

The theme was South Asian cuisine. The food was yummy.
Anyway, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’m going with that for now.

Here’s Stu’s Crew:

This was the best soup I ever had – Mary-Jane’s Ginger-Pumpkin-Shrimp Soup. She’s going to post the recipe in the comments, right MJ?

John made adorable Halloween cookies! He got the dough for only $1 because Halloween was over. (Note to self: save money by celebrating all the holidays a day late.)

What can I say? Dave X continues to obliterate the competition. The year-to-date totals are: Dave X: $201.01 Zoom & Co.: $27.26. (Click here for the snazzy Dave X Change Challenge Flash Chart.)

Dave’s heading for a personal best: with almost two months left in the year, he’s only $6 short of his 2005 total. Go Dave!

As for the rest of us (since it’s Dave X against the rest of us), we’re left scratching our heads and hoping against hope that our luck will be concentrated towards the end of the year. The problem is that Dave X’s lucky days are so much luckier than our lucky days. On his most stellar day, Dave found a $50 bill and a $10 on the streets of Ottawa. On our most collectively stellar day, Laura found a $5 bill, Nancy found seven pennies and Coryse found a penny.

Dave X let us in on a little tip recently: every time he goes to a second-hand clothing store, he checks the pockets of at least five garments. He is often rewarded for these efforts with a five or ten dollar bill. I’ve offered to create a google map of the city with all the second-hand stores mapped out, so that each of my co-workers could “adopt” a store and frequent it daily to check five pockets. But whenever I broach the subject my co-workers look at me funny.

The other day I lined up at the OC Transpo booth at the Rideau Centre to buy my first bus pass in decades. It was a very long lineup that snaked its way through the corridor and the lobby of Sears. I passed the time people-watching.

The peddlers caught my interest. First I saw an ancient Asian woman approaching people in the lineup and showing them something. She didn’t approach everybody, and I wondered how she chose her targets. I tried to see if there was something all her targets had in common, and after awhile I realized she was only approaching visible minority men. Interesting. But what was she peddling? And why were they all turning her down?

Eventually she approached the man in front of me, so I got to eavesdrop. She was selling a bus pass. In very broken English she said her daughter had bought her a bus pass and she had bought herself one, so now she needed to sell one. The man in front of me studied the bus pass carefully and then gave it back to her and shook his head no. Maybe it was a counterfeit bus pass.

“You afraid?” she asked.

“No,” he said. She moved on.

Then I saw a tall young man doing the same thing, trying to sell a bus pass. He wasn’t having any better luck than she was.

After awhile it occurred to me that the person behind me seemed to be rubbing up against me a little more than was necessary. The lineup would move a bit, I’d take a step forward, and the person behind me would take a bigger step forward and rub up against me. We were both wearing winter coats, so it wasn’t too terribly intrusive, but still. I wasn’t sure if it was deliberate or not – lineups can be deceptive that way, since everybody’s personal space is diminished. Finally I turned around and looked at this person. It was a person of indeterminate gender. It was very big, with what appeared to be an enormous bosom in a parka, but it had scruffy whiskers. The face seemed rather soft and blob-like and slack-jawed. Interesting. Creepy, but interesting.

Eventually I found myself near the front of the lineup. A man came up to me and said “I don’t want to stand in this line for three hours, and I’m moving to Toronto.”

I looked at him inquisitively, waiting for whatever proposition he was going to make, while the blobby person nudged up against me again.

The man pulled a handful of bus tickets out of his pocket. “I want you to cash in my bus tick-”

“HEY!” shouted the Official OC Transpo Bus Ticket Vendor from behind his counter, “YOU CAN’T DO THAT HERE!”

“I did it two years ago right here!” declared the man.

“WELL I WASN’T HERE TWO YEARS AGO AND YOU CAN’T DO IT NOW!”

“I’m not lining up for three hours, I’m moving to Toronto and I don’t need these tickets!” replied the man.

“GET AWAY FROM THE LINEUP! LEAVE HER ALONE! IT’S AGAINST REGULATIONS!”

“Screw your fucking regulations!” snarled the man.

And then the Official OC Transpo Bus Ticket Vendor leapt out of his booth and came out among us and started ranting about a by-law and security and harassment and the Safe Streets Act, and threatened to call the authorities.

“Damn,” I thought to myself, “Just when I get to the front of the lineup, everything has to skid to a halt so the Official Bus Ticket Vendor can play cop.

I have to admit that I didn’t take sides until the Safe Streets Act was mentioned, and I have a bias against that particular piece of legislation because it’s used to harass and intimidate street people and I have a soft spot for street people. Not that this particular guy was a street person, and not that I even liked this particular guy, but it’s the principle of the thing, you know?

I considered throwing a wrench into the works by asking the Official Bus Ticket Vendor if he could do something about the blobby person of indeterminate gender who seemed to be getting excited by all the commotion and was now rubbing its front more vigorously against my back. But I didn’t, because I was next in line and the whole experience was almost over, and maybe the blobby person wasn’t even a pervert but was just chromosonally challenged.

Meanwhile, the man with the tickets was spitting mad and challenging the Official Vendor to call the Montreal cops. I don’t know why he wanted the Montreal cops, since the Ottawa cops were so much closer, but anyway.

I turned around to look at the blobby person again, and when I turned back the man with the tickets was skulking away and the Official Vendor was stomping back to his post. I bellied up to the counter and bought my bus pass. Forty minutes had passed since I had joined the lineup, and the ancient Asian woman was still trying to sell that bus pass.

I have a feeling she’ll still be there when I return to buy my December bus pass. I can’t wait.