Misadventures

One of my rules for life is:

“Never underestimate the capacity for stupidity in your fellow man.”

A corollary to this must, following simple logic, therefore be:

“Never underestimate the capacity for stupidity in yourself.”

So here’s my story.  As many of my readers know, I live in Thailand.  What you may not know is that my wife and I bought a house in Minnesota last year.  We still live in Thailand but we’re keeping the home in Minnesota for that dreamed-of day in the future when we move back to the land of the sky-blue waters.

I also have a storage bin of possessions (from the “BH” or “Before Helen” period of my life) that are still in the storage bin I rented several years ago.  These items are not all moved into the new house because, well, there’s a lot of stuff there and I don’t want to just dump them in the new house because then I’d spent my painfully short vacations going through stuff and I’m not ready to do that yet.

In aviation, we say that an accident is usually the result of a chain or series of mistakes or poor choices, and I think that’s true in all endeavors.

First mistake:  Take the keys to the storage bin to Thailand.

Second mistake:  Forget to bring them along when we came home this time.

Another thing about me is I don’t buy the cheapest of anything, especially important stuff like locks.  Usually it’s the strongest, biggest, etc. so cutting these locks was not going to happen with a simple bolt cutter.

I ordered a cordless angle grinder and some cutting wheels (no electricity at the storage facility).  My boyhood friend Bob came along to the storage facility to help me cut off the (I remember distinctly) TWO locks.

We rock up to the door of the storage bin and I go to work on the two locks with the angle grinder.  I have this vague recollection of Bob saying something like, “That’s number 4.  Isn’t yours number 3?” to which I made some flippant reply like, “Mine’s the one with two locks.” and keep on working.

The new angle grinder makes really quick work of the two locks and I pull open the door and immediately have a chain reaction stream of consciousness:

“I don’t remember owning a bolt cutter.”

“This is cleaner than I remember.”

“Where’s my piano?”

“Oh shit! This isn’t my stuff!”

Ding! The bell rings, the lights come on and I suddenly realize I have just broken into someone else’ storage bin.

Mine’s 3 and not 4, as Bob said.

Bob starts making flippant remarks about what to tell the police when they arrive.  My favorite was, “Don’t worry officer.  We’re only going cut off locks until we find our stuff.”

We then cut my (ONE!) lock off and get to my stuff.  While I dig through it finding both stuff I need and stuff I don’t really need, Bob goes to Menards to get another pair of locks like the ones we cut AND a “Wordlock.”  We put the two new locks in the neighbor’s bin and lock the outside with the Wordlock.  I got to select the code and suffice it to say I selected a word appropriate  the circumstances surrounding the replacement of the perfectly good locks on my neighbor’s door.

Then I made a phone call to the landlady that started out, “Hi Sue?  This is the dumbest man alive calling…”

Thanks for reading!

I think I’m going to make “Misadventures” a series and use it to tell more tales of “It seemed like a good idea at the time” moments in my life.

One comes to mind involving a flaming glass of Sambuca and the events immediately following my uttering the words, “Watch this!”