Tell me stories about breaking into your own place that ended poorly

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I have locked myself out occasionally, but the only significant story I remember is this one:

When I was a teen, I locked myself out of the house one day. We had a deck out back, so I climbed onto the deck, managed to maneuver the kitchen window up enough, and climbed in through the window. But somehow in the process I put a large crack in the kitchen window. I was terrified of my parents finding out - they weren’t the kind of parents to just make me pay for it.

Well, they didn’t come home until late at night, and so didn’t see it that day. The next day, a hurricane happened, and the winds were at a record high, and stones were being flung against the walls and doors. When my mom came home and saw it that evening, she just assumed it was the hurricane, and I got away scot-free.

22

My mom was babysitting my then- about a year old niece at my sister’s house, and she had just put the baby down for a nap. Mom needed to run out to her car for something, and she accidently locked the storm door behind her. I guess it had one of those slider switches that can only be opened from the inside, I’m not real sure how it worked.

Mom realizes what she’s done and panics because the baby is inside the house by herself. Mom’s phone is inside too. She starts digging around in her car to find something to break the storm door glass with but all she can come up with is a rubber mallet. So Mom’s standing at the front door of my sister’s house, banging on the glass with a rubber mallet. Glass isn’t breaking.

Baby wakes up from all the noise, and is now screaming in her bedroom. Mom finally gets the idea to throw a rock at the door. She manages to crack the glass but not break it, so she holds the rock up against the glass and hammers on the rock with the mallet until the glass breaks and Mom can open the door.

Mom calls my sister all hysterical and crying, and my sister just laughs. Sister says they wanted to replace that storm door anyways. Mom pays for new door.

23

El Hubbo and I were leaving the house to take a walk. Our front door is rather strange - it’s big wooden monstrosity of a thing (that looks beautiful) that doesn’t lock. Or, rather, the lock is inside the door: there’s a button on the side that you push to lock or unlock it. When it’s unlocked, you then can depress the tongue thing on the handle to open the door. This goes nowhere when it’s locked, so when you lock it and then close it, you’d best be sure. There’s absolutely zero way to unlock it from outside the house - there isn’t even a place for a key to be inserted!

Anyway, we’re used to it now, so we just always leave it locked. We’re leaving for a walk, and he pulls the door closed. *Then *I ask, “do you have keys?” No, he didn’t. Neither did I.

Luckily, our garage is of the half-sunken variety and its windows are those old school, flip up cellar windows. You know, the half size long wide ones? Yeah, those. He broke out one of the panes, flipped the lock, then shimmied into the window and dropped into the garage below. And then went and fetched his keys. (Cobwebs, check. Shame, check. Annoyed husband, check. Whiskey, double check.)

Later, we boarded up where the pane was with some screws, which incidentally matched the other boarded up panes since those windows had been broken by the previous owner. (Maybe he had done the same thing; I dunno.) My husband’s pretty thorough, so he cursed those screws pretty roundly the next time we did the same damn thing.

Now, I ask whether he’s got keys *before *he closes the front door, and he’s always careful to have them. (I really should get better about carrying mine, hey?) Which is a good thing, because he’s really screwed in that window extra tight since the last time and the window on the other side is bricked in (we added a patio). And we’ve bought a new deadbolt and door knob for the door into the house from the garage, and it’s always locked now.

I really should look into that spare key hiding idea.

24

It took me years and years to learn to take my keys and wallet with me. Usually I just had to wait or called for help (family member, etc).

Once in high school I was truly and absolutely fucked: I was staring down the barrel of 2 hours in the freezing cold. Nowhere to walk to, like a coffee shop, and just hang out. No cell phone.

So I stacked two redwood picnic tables on top of each other and one bench. I slowly climbed up the tables, stopped and paused to reconsider. I could die! I could hit my head and fall into the fountain and freeze!

Or I could just stop being a pussy and do it.

I took a deep breath and got into the bench, hands against the house. I figured one of my bedroom windows might be unlocked due to sheer forgetfulness.

I put one foot on a bit of shingle over a pillar and put some weight on a gutter, tearing away the window screen unceremoniously.

I pushed the window. It moved! Sorta hop-jumped from my position; I was at armpit level, arms inside the window. I half-somersaulted myself into my bedroom, hitting my head on the cast iron baseboard and cursing.

I was in!

25

Missed the edit:

We should all get one of these things. Keypad lock with the housekey in it.

26

2 years ago, Thanksgiving weekend:

I went out the side door to drop the recycling cans/bottles into the garbage can. I knew that the screen door handle was broken, but I always managed to drop off the cans and bottles and make it back before the door closed. Unfortunately, I was distracted by something and heard the door slam. Damn! It was freezing cold and I was in shorts and a tee-shirt. And I had recently replaced the screen in the door with glass (for the winter).

I could have walked to my family friend’s house about a block away for my spare key, but realized that I had never returned it from the last time I borrowed it. I could still have went there just to use the phone to call my sister, who also has a spare. But it was cold and I was lazy.

So, I tried to see if I could pry back the frame that supported the glass. It seems like I could get my fingers in there if I used my nails. And it seemed like it was working. If I could just bend it enough to get a curved stick through and push the handle back, I’d be set. Unfortunately, real glass isn’t that flexible. I bent it more and it shattered! Damn! Well, at least I could get in now.

Except…

I noticed a very large pool of blood on the ground around the broken glass. The glass had somehow mysteriously ripped open the heel of my hand. Blood was spilling everywhere. I grabbed a towel, wrapped my hand in it, and proceeded to drive to the ER. The blood quickly soaked through the towel, so I held it outside my car window, so not to stain my car seats.

I basically left a trail of blood from my house to the ER. 26 stitches later, I was much smarter. It’s really annoying cleaning up broken glass with blood caked all around it, with one hand!

While I still haven’t fixed the screen door handle, I also haven’t replaced the glass, so I’m good for now.

27

I don’t lock my house, so no stories there. Once, though, I was driving home in my subdivision (efore I moved out to the middle-of-nowhere). I saw my missing cat dart through a yard, so I stopped my car and left it running to chase down the kitty. Tackled the bewildered cat (who was NOT my Meg) and let her go and went back to my running car. Somehow the dogs inside had hit the automatic locks, locking me out of my car while it’s running and in the middle of the street, with two dobermans and a German shepherd inside. I had to call the state troopers to come and pop the lock with their slim jim.

Meg was hiding in the spare bedroom and not lost at all. It’s a lucky thing for her I went in to get a book, because she could’ve starved to death in there. As it was, she just looked at me when I opened the door and sauntered out.

StG

28

My stupidest story concerns not breaking in… I was on my way home in a mate’s car and checked for my keys, which weren’t in my bag, pocket or anywhere on my person. So I asked mate to drive me on to my boyfriend’s flat as he had a spare. I told mate to go ahead and leave me there. Then I discovered that the outer door to the flats had been bolted from the inside by some idjit. I phoned my boyfriend but he had gone to bed early and left his mobile on charge in the other room so he didn’t hear it. Leaving out some failed attempts to throw things at his window, I eventually phoned another friend and arranged to spend the night on her couch.

The kicker: Having picked up my message on his mobile, my understandably grumpy boyfriend met me with his keys early the next morning, but when we got to my house we found my keys – where I’d left them, in the lock.

Then there was the spare key I put under a brick under the greenhouse and couldn’t find next time I locked myself out. That turned up over ten years later when I was digging a big hole for a patio.

29

Back when the earth was still cooling, the then-boyfriend and I decided to go take in one of Indiana’s favorite events: the annual Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival which has been a summer fixture since the mid 60s down in Brown County, Indiana. The county seat, Nashville, may be a shameless tourist trap, but Brown County is renowned for its foliage, music and its wineries, among other things, and it’s where the festival is held.

Did I mention the wineries?

We had a wonderful time, enjoying the music, the people smoking their favorite recreational drugs (this was the mid-70s after all) – and of course the wineries. They brought… samples… to the festival. Lots of samples. The then-boyfriend was more of a recreational smoker than a drinker, so I made up for his lack of beverage consumption by sampling more than my fair share.

Fast-forward to the end of the day and at last we’re pulling into my driveway so he can drop me off. He was fine to drive, but I’m feeling no pain. We say good night, etc, and then I make more or less for the back door to the house. Like the nice guy he was, he’s waiting until I’m in the house before driving off.

It’s late, probably 2 or 3 in the morning, but I’d told my mom I would be late. That wasn’t the issue. After all, I was a responsible 21-year-old, right? After several minutes of rooting around in my hobo bag, I finally realized through my lovely, wine-colored haze that I didn’t have my house key. And natch, the door is locked.
Well… rats. What to do, what to do?

“What’s wrong?” hissed the boyfriend when he saw me not going into the house. He was hissing because a goodly number of the house windows were open and he didn’t want to disturb anyone sleeping. Like my mother. He knew as well as I did she really did not need to find out first-hand the exact state of inebriation reached by her normally-responsible eldest daughter.

“No house key!” I hiss back, thinking furiously. Or trying to, given my state, so I can’t say for absolute about my brain’s ability to process much of anything at that point. Was there a key hidden around somewhere, was there one on the shelf in the garage –

He starts laughing. Not loudly of course. Can’t have that. “Not funny, Mike!” I snark. “I’m never going to hear the end of this if I have to wake up my sister to let me in!”

Still grinning, he just points at the ground floor window nearest me.

Oh.

Did I mention the house windows were already OPEN?

Let me explain ‘open.’ Our house was older, armed with what I long ago privately dubbed the Storm Windows from Hell. These were not the storm windows of ordinary, mortal man. I suspected they could have easily withstood a thermonuclear detonation.

They were solid reinforced wood, with some kind of glass that was much thicker than you’d expect for a window. They also weighed about a ton and were impossible to handle. They had two latches at the top and two at the bottom and those securely sealed the window against the frame to defend against Indiana winters, which can be maximum nasty. Allegedly, you could simply lift up and remove them from the outside frame for cleaning.

Yeah, right. :rolleyes:

As it was a houseful of women and because the storms were all such a major pain in the ass to work with, we never did take any of them off. Mom had decreed some ago that none of us wimmenfolk had any business being up on a ladder at the second floor wrestling with these things.

Instead, we bought a batch of dowel rods and had them cut to certain lengths. We used them to prop the storms open so you could get fresh air coming into the house.

So.

He was pointing at the downstairs bathroom window, not ten feet away from me, which was propped wide open. Groovy! Problem solved. At least until I had to actually perform the mechanics of getting my inebriated ass and voluminous peasant skirt through said open window without getting hung up on the latches.

It… wasn’t pretty. I managed to bend the interior screen completely out of shape to the point I eventually had to take it to the hardware store to be redone. Then, struggling to get past the storm frame, I tore the hell out of my skirt on the bottom latches and scraped my back up pretty good too in the process.

And then there was the pièce de résistance: a full face-plant in the bathtub when I finally over-balanced and fell through the opening. I was lucky I didn’t break a tooth, my jaw - or my neck - or in the process. Why I didn’t rouse the entire house, I’m not sure. Unless my mother was holding out on me… If she was, she kept it to herself. Probably laughing herself silly at her ‘responsible’ daughter.

For the rest of our time together, every time Mike saw me he’d hum, ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.’ :smiley:

30

1980, living in a dumpy apartment in a college town. Second floor. No pets allowed, but we had a cat anyway.

The back door was chained shut. The front door… the knob had been wonky for a while, and this day it quit working entirely. So we call the landlord’s maintenance department from a neighbor’s phone, all the while thinking “oh shit, we are BUSTED” because of the cat sitting pretty in the front window, wondering why we weren’t coming in.

We wound up saved… the next door neighbor’s boyfriend came home, said “I bet I can get in through the attic!” - and did. Yeah, the attic areas were connected, and there was a ceiling trap (I don’t recall whether it was just a removable panel or actual pulldown stairs).

So, “ended poorly” not so much, but at least we got in - and were able to hide the cat in the bedroom before the repairman got there.

Funnily enough, I got into my NEXT apartment the same way a year later - a 2-story townhouse-style, I walked out the door, forgot I had the knob set to lock… and the neighbor got in through the pulldown stairs.

31

Well, not arrested, but when I first moved into my house I did lock myself out - I’d absentmindedly turned the thumb lock on the laundry room door (which had been an outside door before the laundry room was added), took the trash out, and then realized I couldn’t get back in. I couldn’t even get out of the back yard because I’d locked the padlock on the fence behind me, which had been open when I got there and I didn’t have the key.

I was in my pajamas, by the way, with standing up hair, no bra, no shoes, etc.

So I had to climb the fence to get out of the back yard, and of course I caught my pajama pants on the fence top and tore a great big hole in the ass.

And of course the front door was locked, because I’m conscientious about that.

So I had to knock on doors to get somebody to lend me their phone. Not my finest hour. I hadn’t even met any of my neighbors yet, and there I was with dirty bare feet and Edward Scissorhands hair holding the back of my pants together.

32

Haven’t had to break into my home, but I have had to break into my own vehicle a couple of times, and the last time I did so, I was using a slim-jim to try and unlock the door, pulling upwards, and the thing popped loose, and I managed to punch myself in the eye hard enough to make that eye hurt and dilate, so that one pupil was bigger than the other.

Didn’t give myself a concussion, and didn’t even end up with a black eye, but for the rest of the day, that pupil was larger than the other.

33

We don’t usually lock the kitchen door, but we had a break-in, so started being more responsible.
One night I took the trash out in my holey old nightgown, only to find the door closed and locked behind me.
My husband was at the gym (3 hours) my neighbors weren’t at home. I sat freezing on the porch for three hours.
The neighbor got home and offered to climb into the bedroom window. He’s not the most mechanical guy in the world, in fact, he couldn’t figure out the extention ladder. I got the ladder up for him. He climbed up to the window just as my husband got home and saw someone breaking into our house.
He didn’t notice me at the bottom of the ladder. He roared out of the truck claiming to have a gun (he didn’t) and saying he was calling 911 (he did). I yelled at him that it was only Dave, and I’d locked myself out.
He called 911 back to cancel, but the 911 operator said she still had to send someone. So, we got to explain it all to the officer. At least I got to put on clothes before he got there.

Another time we went out to play trivia at a local pub. We got home only to find neither had keys.
Hubby decided to climb in tha same window Dave had, only he was too fat. We went back to the pub and asked one of the waiters who was just getting off work if he’d help. He climbed in without incident. We tried to give him money for his trouble, but he wouldn’t accept it. Instead, he gets tons of mileage out of the story. :rolleyes:

34

Heh. Why am I not surprised that more than one of these stories involves drinking? I especially enjoy the ones that involve humiliation, skirts tearing in direct view of attractive boys, heads banging into furniture, near-injury and the like. I feel like less of an ass for crawling into my laundry room now. I had no other choice. It was night, and I seriously waited around for a half hour, before trying to pick the lock with a bobbing pin! Btw, when I finally broke in, as I slapped around for the light switch, I accidentally put the carbon monoxide detector somehow and set off some loud beeping. I kept slapping around until it stopped, then I ran upstairs as quickly as I could, hoping no one would notice me. No one did.

35

We have this one. Who needs keys?

:slight_smile:

I have keyless entry on my car, too. In the past, I was notorious for locking my keys in the car. I can’t remember ever locking myself out of the house. I’ve always had to have the key to lock the door.

36

I see that several ladies seem to get locked out in their PJs/nightgowns. Please know I’m always available to help out in these situations.

37

My mother locked herself out of her apartment when going on a date with my father when they were in college. He had to climb into a window to let her back in. The only reason the story might qualify for this thread is that they were going to a costume party, so he accomplished this feat barefoot and wearing nothing but a short lava-lava. And I think maybe some shell necklaces.

38

Not my own place, well, it was my parents house. They left me alone for the weekend, me being all of 16. For some odd reason (because I lived on a block completely surrounded by the houses of close relatives and no one - no one! - ever locked their doors even at night) - yes, I locked myself out. The back door hadn’t been locked in 20 years, and I managed to do it. I didn’t know what else to do except break a basement window, a smallish rectangle, and squeeze through and drop to the floor. I did that but missed some broken glass and badly scratched my thigh, and the drop to the floor was further than I’d thought. I did have the brains to put a piece of cardboard in the broken window and tape it up good so the house wouldn’t be full of mosquitoes…For all my pain and efforts, I got called an asshole by my father when he got home, pissed about his broken window. And bits of broken glass kept rising up and breaking through my skin for a year after. … What else was I supposed to do? Call the police to bust down the door? Go stay somewhere else?

39

I have another one that sort of counts, but doesn’t involve alcohol I’m afraid.

About 15 years ago I moved into my current home. I pulled up in a van with a couple of friends and most of my worldly possessions, only to find a car blocking my drive.

I’d had a long day of moving heavy furniture into the van and then 4 hours stuck in traffic and so I was pretty pissed off. I went around knocking on various neighbours doors and tried to be polite but I was basically accusing them all of blocking my drive.

No-one owned the car or had ever seen it before that morning. I eventually gave up and decided to go open the house up and put the kettle on. We’d just have to move all of the furniture around the car and across the lawn.

When I opened the front door, there on the mat was a set of car keys and a rental agreement. You see I had some business driving to do first thing on Monday morning and I’d ordered a hire car through my employers. I’d asked for it to be delivered Sunday evening, but they decided to drop it off on Saturday morning instead and I hadn’t twigged.

So for the next few days my neighbours got to watch me driving around in the car that I had accused them all of parking in front of my drive. My reputation has never really recovered from that!