Crowbars and Sledgehammers

crowbar (plural crowbars)  

From crow +‎ bar, probably because the forked end looks like a crow's foot.

1. An iron or steel bar, often with a flattened end which may also be hook-shaped, to be used as a lever to manually force things apart.

sledgehammer (plural sledgehammers)

1. A hammer that consists of a large, heavy, broad and flat block of metal (the head) attached to a handle typically 0.5 meter to 1 meter long. The sledgehammer's design is meant to allow it to be swung powerfully, and to distribute force over a wide area upon impact.

The other day I took some stuff down to our basement storage.  This is a small cage-like space in the basement, aptly enough, where you can put things that you should have thrown away when dinosaurs were still roaming the earth.  As a general rule if the stuff you own doesn't fit into the space that you inhabit, then you don't need it.  I can see some exceptions: winter sports gear temporarily stored during the summer, luggage, and I can't come up with anything else except for summer sports gear temporarily stored during the winter, although why anyone needs all of that sports gear I can't say.  From the look of most of us we aren't using too much of all of that equipment.

If a piece of stuff is stored in a sealed box - you don't need it.  If a piece of stuff hasn't been used in 6 months - you don't need it.  If you're saving something of sentimental value for your kids - get rid of it because they sure as shit don't want it - do you want any of the crap stored in your parent's basement?

Anyway, I took some various and sundry pieces of disposable crap down to this storage cage.  To access this space I needed two keys - one to open an outer security door and one to open my open personal door - because we sure don't want any international jewel thieves breaking into our storage cages and rummaging through our garbage.

We recently had an extra key made for our apartment.  The key has a square head.  This will be an important fact to remember as the story unfolds.  When I was done storing my crap I locked the inner door and, after closing the outer door, I attempted to lock it with a key that, ironically enough, also had a square head, although it was a different key than the one for the apartment.  We're only two keys here so it shouldn't have been such a gargantuan task to keep them separate.

It didn't work.  I jiggled the key a little and jiggled the lock some and then started to jiggle with real purpose, if by "jiggle" you mean "violently shake while cursing god and all his or her minions."  My theory is if something mechanical doesn't work then the best technique is to force  or pound or throttle the offending device until it does.  This is why I have 3 hammers and only one screwdriver.  I used to have a sledge hammer but it was too heavy to move.  Man, I loved that sledgehammer - that baby got me through some locked doors in the past.  I also had a crow bar.  I think I may still have that.  It was great, too, for prying open doors that didn't open when I thought they should open.

I figured everything out eventually, at a point of time right before the key was jiggled hard enough to snap off inside the lock, which would have solved my problems for sure.  I just told SuperK about this today.  It was a personal story.