Why People Lock Their Doors

People lock their doors because when they don't other people who they don't want to see might come into their homes. These people may be intoxicated ex-friends-with-benefits who are too drunk to drive themselves home but think they can walk into your home at 3 in the morning and find a hospitable place to stay. These people won't take the fact that its 3 am and you haven't spoken them in several months as a deterrent. No sirree. They want to sleep in your house and they want to do so immediately. These are often the same people who have ripped cigarettes from your lips as you've been smoking them to protest your habit and who have told you that they'd never take you seriously as a potential girlfriend because they met you at a bar rather than at a bookstore or on the Metro even though you go to bookstores a lot and ride the Metro about 20 times a week. These are people with a myriad of conflicting needs, who want what they want, in the very specific way that they want it and not even a smidge differently. These are people who show up in your room, unannounced, trashed, demanding to know why you don't answer their 5 am phone calls anymore. These people are not dangerous per say. They're not the same people who enter your home at night in order to take your best silverware or to reappropriate your plasma screen. But they're disturbing nonetheless. These are people who sane people tend to ignore but when faced with their presence at the foot of their beds at 3 am have little control over the situation. These are people with control issues. These are people who pass out on your sofa and then worm their way into your bed after you have fallen asleep again. These are people who offer to drive you to work in the morning after their intrusion has totally messed up your rhythms and you're about to be late for work. These are people who deliberately drive the wrong way up Rock Creek Parkway in a lane that has been closed to all traffic simply because they disagree with the way in which traffic has been engineered to flow. These are people who remark that their current girlfriends are not as interesting as you as you clutch your seat as they swerve past cars that aren't going as fast as they'd like. These are people who inspire you to take stock of your living situation and to wonder if perhaps you need to adopt a nice big attack dog from the local animal shelter.

And that is why people lock their doors. Remember kids, Hey Pretty learns things the hard way so that you don't have to.

Night of the Ex-Whatever Convergences

Could a representative from the Universe kindly explain to me what the f**k was going on last night? Why it was that two of my most vexing and saga-esque ex-whatevers decided to make themselves present in my life?

Remember over a year ago when I penned an educational missive for you all on why people lock their doors? For those of you who weren't HP readers at the time, the reason people lock their back doors is: to keep unwanted characters out of their homes. Because sometimes a drunk ex decides it would be a good idea to crash somewhere in your home even though he's been told a million times that he is never welcome in your house ever again.

Yet sometimes, even locking one's doors can't guarantee your security. Sometimes a person decides to bust down your door, tearing the frame and decimating the lock all because they are too cheap to pay for a cab home. Note to drunk men in DC: Baby Jesus gave us taxis for a reason--to transport your drunk ass home from Adams Morgan because at the age of 32 you still haven't learned what your tolerance level is.

I suppose I should have taken his three text messages and two drunken voicemail messages as a warning. The one about all the crazy, dirty awful s*x we could have if he came over was hilarious enough for me to save for 46 to listen to later, but I naively thought that if I ignored him, he'd go away. Not you know, that he'd inflict costly damage on to my house for the sake of finding a place to sleep for the night.

I also should have personally escorted him from our home rather than trusting he'd make his way out, as he completely spooked one of my other female roommates. At least the message I received from him this morning (left at 4-something am) telling me he'd left his cell phone somewhere in our house was a small consolation prize.

While all this was happening, another ex-whatever was texting me to ask me "whatcha doin?" Of course, the logical response to such a question very early on a Thursday would be "sleeping", not say, "fending off the advances of drunken exes who break into people's houses late at night."

While all of this is very annoying and jarring, I do understand that in the long run, I have little to complain about. I know that my situation will never be as bad as that of an acquaintance who had somebody bust into her home in the middle of the night about a year ago, to very different and far more unsettling ends. Still, I can't help but think of how often we take our perceived security for granted. How often I sleep with my window wide open, walk home from the metro alone after dark, or fall asleep at night convinced that merely a locked door can keep the potential dangers of the world at bay.