Broken Key
I came home for lunch today, put my key in the lock, and it snapped off about a centimetre and a half from the tip.
It was a shock but, with hindsight, not so surprising. It was more than ten years old and the lock is a bit dodgy. It needs a bit of jingling and jangling to get open at the best of times.
A few millimetres of the broken edge hung from the hole, not enough for my fingernails to grasp.
I managed to find an old pair of rusty tweezers at my mother-in-law’s house but although I have petite, girly hands I’m really not good with small, fiddly stuff. I thought there was a pretty good chance that I would end up pushing the broken fragment unreachably deeper into the lock. I’d end up spending several hundred dollars on a locksmith visit and more on a new lock and keys.
I have to learn to take it easy. On my first try I got a good hold on the chunk of key and it slid out easily.
The steamy summer interior of my hallway has seldom seemed so welcoming.