Locked out

While living in an apartment has its obvious disadvantages, one thing I like is the trash chute just down the hall from our door. No walking through blizzards to take the trash out or forgetting to drag that large black thing to the road every Monday.

Yesterday I took the trash out. I left Ethan on the floor with his toys and slipped out the door to do something that would take less than a minute - or so I thought.

No, I didn't throw my keys or cell phone down the chute - though I'm always paranoid I'll do that.

I came back to my door to find it locked.

I instantly remembered the building engineer, who had, earlier that morning replaced some baseboards in my apartment. He had come the day before as well, and I noticed when he left, he locked the bottom lock. We never lock the bottom lock - the one that only locks on the outside. Apparently he had done it again and now I was locked outside of my apartment while Ethan was inside.

My second thought was an image of Ethan sticking the toilet brush in his mouth, pulling my lamps off the tables and doing everything else that's absolutely off-limits.

I remembered that our manager had the day off and my landlady did not have my keys so I started knocking on my neighbors' doors to call someone (like Ryan, who was 30 minutes away at work) who had my keys. No one answered their door.

On a whim, I took the elevator down to the bottom entry. As I walked out of the elevator, a maintenance man was walking out of the other door, on his way home. I told him about my situation, and though he didn't have my keys, he found them quickly. I was just glad I took the elevator when I did.

I ran back to my apartment to find Ethan covered in flour. Just kidding. He was still just playing with his toys on the floor. He looked like he had no idea I was missing for 10 minutes.