What Would MacGyver Do?

This afternoon, I left home without my house keys, my car keys, or my cell phone. Forgetting your keys is... an epiphany, the way it dawns on you. You're not even thinking about the keys; on autopilot, you reach into your pocket, there's something that jingles like keys and you pull it out and it's just change. But the keys oughta be in there, or in the other pocket, or even though they weren't in your pocket the first time you checked they'll definitely be there if you take some of the junk out of your pockets. Finally, it dawns on you, you're locked out.

Unless the door realized you left your keys inside and decided to be friendly and not lock. Nope, the door's locked. You're stuck outside, Mom's not gonna be home for four hours, and it's raining.

I stood around for a little while, tried the back door, then took inventory of what I had with me and asked the critical question, "What would MacGyver do?"

Analyze the situation: I need to get into the house, but I have no keys. The spare key is at Grandma's house in Edison, and I have a car but no car key. I do, however, have an umbrella, two pairs of dress pants in a paper grocery bag, a thank-you note in an envelope, several coins, tissues, my wallet and all the paper and plastic in there, plus whatever I'm wearing and whatever I can find lying about in the front yard. MacGyver would probably just break a window and crawl into the house, then end the episode with a stupid grin. Me, I've got no ideas.

But in a crisis, I get creative, by which I mean I come up with all these hare-brained schemes that MacGyver's cool enough to pull off, but which I'd just use as opportunities to humiliate myself. Maybe I can take apart the umbrella and use one of the metal ribs to pick the lock (a lock that sometimes even my key can't open). For instance, I know from my four or so hours of training as a junior agent at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, that when you're picking a lock, you need to start with the lock's farthest tumbler first. That could come in handy. Or... maybe I can hotwire the car, drive to Grandma's house, and get the spare key. Notwithstanding the fact that I can't get into the car in the first place without the key, I don't know how to hotwire a car. But, lemme think, I could walk to the library and look it up online.

But for once, I acted somewhat sanely. I walked into town, called Grandma to make sure she had the spare key, then got a ride over there from Mrs. Percoco. Which all required a lot less explaining than why my car's missing a window and has its ignition wires dangling out from under the dash.

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Afterword: After I made it home, I did a Google search for "hotwiring", giving me no useful information whatsoever.