Murphy's Law or the likes of it proved correct yet again.

This happened when my room-mate and myself decided to buy some mineral water at 10 in the night. This super-intelligent guy assumed I had the keys and locked the damn door.
The game got over even before it started. Yeah, we were locked out.

Now this is not really the first time it had happened to me. But all the previous incidences took place in India where banging your lock with a big stone is quite a normal gesture.
It was cold and I was hungry. So we decided to grab some food before anything else. Gladly, he paid. And now, the story starts.

We came back to the house. It was exactly as we left it. Then Janesh suddenly realized the housing community's manager might have a spare key. Well, it was a Saturday night, and as expected the guy was out of town, his house locked.

It is not always a nice idea to knock anyone's door in USA whom you have never talked to. But this is exactly what Janesh had in mind. It was already 12 in the night. There were only two houses where life still seemed to stand in light than down on bed. One was our immediate neighbor. Well, there was this girl and this guy on the door (left ajar) in a complete lip-interlock which it seemed would not dis-entangle even if jerked by a 8.0 richter quake. Of course what could I have done with my meagre problem to get attention.

Meanwhile Janesh had knocked the other house. The lady did not come out, as I was expecting. I explained the problem (Janesh has problem in speaking since birth and was still trying his level best making things worse for me to handle). She would not help and I just apologized. Little did I realize that there was more to come from this house later in the night.

Meanwhile the power of time had gotten over what the mighty quake cannot dream of. The guy had left. We knocked on the door. The girl was very cooperative. She called a lock-smith for us. Suddenly we heard a whistle and two cops surrounded us, just like in movies.
What had happened meanwhile was that the lady whom Janesh tried to talk in his not-so-appealing-across-closed-door style thought we would rob her house by asking her to call the housing community for us.

After that followed a full interview round, the likes of which no software engineer has seen in life. Eventually they realized that given our height and physique and comparing it with USA's average height, we could not possibly do much besides trying to co-exist and breathe.

Finally the lock-smith came, charged us $90 for opening the damn door. Yeah we could have bargained but it was 2 AM already and I decided to call it a day.
But surely something to remember all my life and to take a lesson from it what not to do when you are in USA. Or rather what not to allow your roomie to do when you are here. :-)

- Adhyas