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bagoftophats · 3 years

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Beside my bed is a chest of draws and on it is a neat little box. In it I keep all the bits and bobs I might carry in a day, keys, pens, loose change etc. Everyone has something similar but mine also contains a small leather pouch, it's black, work worn and creased with age. It contains my lock picks, They're probably 40 years old now and showing their age much like their owner. They get little use now, my dexterity has diminished with age and my limited ability compromised with time. I haven't yet the heart to retire them to the toolbox though, it would be like burying a small part of me. I don't recall my primary reason for buying them, my motivation for it but they do appeal to that tinkering side of me as well as my 'back door' nature. Of the need to see what I am not supposed too, to see what others would prefer I didn't, the sneaky side of me. I read somewhere once that after you pick your first lock you are hooked for life as there's no other feeling like it, and it's true. When that hasp popped up on that Abus it was like opening a door on a whole different world and having that door lock itself behind you. I am not exaggerating when I say that it changes a persons perspective, our worlds are governed and bounded by locks through which only the selected are allowed where all the keys are in the hands of others. It is such a normal state of being that seldom do we even think about it let alone notice it. Then suddenly that tension wrench, that thin slither of spring steel that has been under your thumb for an age and stubbornly refusing to budge, gives, and the barrel rotates slowly and smoothly to a stop, the lock jumps and the hasp springs out and in that split second the ground shifts, the perspective shifts and those walls suddenly gain a fragility, a permeability that can never be reversed. It is an amazing feeling that is lost on those that have not experienced it and its difficult to explain by anybody who has. And then the hunt was on, old locks, padlocks, cabinets and cash tins. Anything and everything I felt my picks could handle. And all of it on the sly, all done quietly and surreptitiously. No one was allowed to know. I don't recall a specific reason for this secrecy other than it was the same for most of my interests. Although I probably had considered some nefarious use for this developing skill that the world in general would not have approved of. And in hindsight the latter was probably the more accurate. I once picked all the locks on my Fathers Land Rover. I would like to claim that it was down to my exceptional skill but it was more a testament to how shockingly insecure the locks were. A debility that was not just restricted to our own as I was able to prove on numerous occasions afterwards. I also cracked my Fathers filing cabinet. A big green metal thing that stood in the corner of his office and to a young and highly imaginative young mind obviously promised to contain all the richest treasures of the universe. It didn't as it turned out, It was all rather boring really. Padlocks I got pretty good at but the dial combination ones I was a little hit and miss on. The cable type I could crack in seconds then I would take great delight in locking them back up in different locations or resetting the combinations entirely, depending on how mischievous I was feeling. I started making my own bump keys, and skeleton keys for warded locks which sounds more arcane than it actually is. And stuffing my pick pouch with slithers of coke can for use as shims. I hoarded old keys and locks and eventually repurposed an old toolbox to keep it all in. I still have it in my shed now. It is stuffed to the gills and weighs a tonne but I don't have the heart to get rid of it. I even bought a pair of Canadian Police handcuffs once, just to test my skills on but I think they deserve a page of their own. I never graduated to the more complex locks, the Yale's and their like, though it wasn't for the want of trying. It was the spool and mushroom pins that ultimately defeated me. I think I just lacked the manual dexterity. I knew how to do them but I just couldn't. I never lost interest though and now understand way more than I could ever do in practice. One time in secondary school, I'm uncertain of precisely what year, I was passing one of the offices. A little pokey place of no discernible purpose beside one of the quieter entrances. The door had been left open and on the desk had sat a set of keys. Now being the mischievous little magpie that I was, I nicked them. I hadn't known what they were for but it had been an opportunity that couldn't be squandered. Later examination had revealed a half dozen warded keys, all of which had been modified in some manner. Skeletonised, after a fashion. I think that instead of teachers having huge bunches of keys to carry they had developed the habit of cutting down one or two to fit many and in doing so, unwittingly they had given me access to most of the school. But how was I to utilize this sudden and unexpected gift? What nefarious deeds could a teenage boy possibly get up to with such power at his fingertips? Well, in hindsight, not a great deal. I would lock the the doors of empty classrooms, or unlock them, never often enough to draw attention but enough to be bloody annoying. I explored cupboards and store rooms, cleaning rooms. And found with a little wiggling that I could also undo the narrow doors in the corridor's and toilets that concealed the buildings pipe work. This discovery led to what was probably the crowning glory of the whole escapade, the 'South Pacific' incident. Which I think is too great a diversion for this reminiscence so I will have to go into greater depth elsewhere. In retrospect I don't think I took a great deal, certainly far less than the opportunities presented to me. I think it was just the fact that I could do it, that I could go where I was not allowed to, to be where I shouldn't have been. I hated school and pretty much everything that walked or crawled in it. It was Hell to me. But this seemed to wrest back some of that power and self worth it had stripped from me. I think I gained more satisfaction from this than from anything I stole. Though admittedly I didn't have to buy any stationary for years after. At the same time I knew what I was doing was 'wrong', that the locked doors were locked for a reason. That certain places had to be off limits. That boundaries had to be set. I understood their purpose but they were 'their' boundaries, not mine, I was not acceptable in their world as they were not welcome in mine. On the face of it I would adhere to them to maintain that acceptable front, like a gay man posing as straight and without the least qualms about crossing that boundary when the opportunity arose. I suppose also, subconsciously the the lock picking and the keys became another physical way of exploring their world, another tool to try and understand them, like taking a screwdriver to an old clock or a spanner to a knackered engine. A way of peeling off the outer shell and rummaging through the gubbings to see how it all worked. If I could understand them, if I knew more about them I could form myself into a more acceptable shape to fit into that world. And I did want to fit in, I desperately wanted to be like them. But it was years before I realized that it was sheer folly, just fantasy thinking. I could no more be like 'them' than I could be a chair, a table or a garden wall so aberrant was my make up to theirs's. I went through an enormous degree of torment before I came to terms with that. Before I accepted what I was. My interest in locks and picks never went away, even after I finished school and it became a segment of my life just as reading or writing had done, it became a tool in my life with more tales than I have time to tell here.

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