Yesterday I discovered that I had made an error at work. It was a tiny, one-letter error, but a poorly placed one. It was the kind of thing that was not only embarrassing but could also land me in some hot water.
I thought that there might still be time to fix the mistake, but just barely. I needed to take care of it immediately, and I needed help from a coworker. Unfortunately, it was was time to pick up Marshall at the bus stop. So I decided that I’d sent out a quick e-mail and then follow it up with a phone call when I got back inside.
I waited impatiently for the bus. When it finally arrived, I explained the situation to Marshall, and we hurried up the driveway. We got to the door, and it was locked!
Of course I hadn’t locked it, but somehow it had gotten locked. No one else was home. I didn’t have the keys or a phone on me. I tried all the other doors: locked. The screens on the windows couldn’t be opened from the outside. I tried the keypad that’s supposed to open the garage door, but I couldn’t get the code right. We were locked out, and the clock was ticking, and to make matters worse, it was freezing outside!
This was the point at which some people would have broken a window. But, though I am crazy most of the time, I’m usually calm in emergencies. I wasn’t going to break a window unless it was a matter of life or death. So I continued to think about ways to get into the house and came up with one last thing to try.
And it worked! It shouldn’t have, and normally wouldn’t have, but I got lucky. Once we were back inside, I made my phone call and took care of the work-related problem. So I neither froze nor ended up in hot water. But it certainly did make for an interesting afternoon!