Sylver Dragon's Journal: Knowledge is power

On my way to work this morning, my wife calls me in a bit of a panic. She managed to lock herself out of the apartment. Now, while this is one of those "doh!" moments, it's pretty understandable. The latch on our door is the kind which can be opened from the inside regardless of whether or not it is locked. Because of that we have both, on occasion, opened the door, stepped out and closed the door behind us. Then, when we go to lock the deadbolt we realized that we had left our keys inside. Fortunately, every time we have done this in the past either one of us has still been inside, or both of us stepped out at once, which meant that I was on hand. The reason that my being there is fortunate is that I am pretty good at "credit-carding" a lock. This being an apartment the lock is about as cheap of a lock as can be found, so it doesn't have an anti-credit card mechanism. The only difficulty is that the door opens inward, so any attempt to open it requires that the card be flexible enough to make a turn around the edge of the door, yet rigid enough to force the lock; a grocery store customer card works well. So, both times this has been an issue, I have managed to pop the lock in a couple of minutes.
Now, when my wife called, I'm about 45 minutes from home and getting further away by the minute. Remembering what she had seen me do, she asked if I could talk her though popping the lock. Well, I figure it beats me having to drive home to open the door for her so I start trying to explain how to do it. Besides which, if I have to turn around, I'll need to make it to the office first (another 15 minutes further away), just to let everyone know that I wouldn't be in for quite a while (or probably not at all). In about 10 minutes, and with a bit of verbal coaching, she has the door open.
It just goes to show that you never know when an odd skill you picked up as a kid will suddenly be very useful. Also, it goes to show just how worthless cheap door locks are.