I'm Just A Man, Not A Magician - Stuck Deadbolt Conquers Man

My daughter has her own place. The rain we've had lately in Florida has run off her roof onto her back door and has clogged her deadbolt.

"Sure," I told her, "I'll come right over and fix that." The lock didn't work. The key would go in the hole but wouldn't turn the latch to open the door. All she had was the front door for entry and exit. Besides that, when the back door didn't work she couldn't put her car in the garage and walk the twenty paces through a courtyard to her back door and gain entry. She chose to leave her car on the street and come in through the front door.

So, as you would expect, even my WD 40 didn't work on this lock. It was stuck tight. I went home disappointed, knowing she needed a new lock. So my wife and I went out and bought a new door lock. Now our daughter is upset with both of us for buying the lock, and she should be.

"I wanted to buy that lock, not you," she so rightly said.

I went back the next day and discovered I had to get into the court yard to fix the door from the outside. So, like Superman or Batman, I hurtled the white fence and fixed the door. Don't I wish!

I'm no longer the age where I am athletic and can jump fences and win races. It was raining, so we got a chair from upstairs and after much straining and struggling I stood on the chair and struggled over the six-and-one-half-foot fence. I'm lucky I didn't break a leg.

From there I was able to use a screw driver and a hammer. I had to be very careful not to break the door casing, because if that broke it would be a hundred-fifty-dollar bill from a carpenter, plus paint. Well, long story short - nothing I did in the rain worked that day while I stood out there getting wet.

The next day was Friday and I'm not a quitter. I went back there with my wife, armed with new equipment. We bought a needle-nosed vice grips and a needle-nosed plyers. I huffed and I puffed. I had my rubber hammer and worked away for two hours. Still, no success. Finally, in desperation, I told my daughter to call someone who does this every day to come out. She did. And the man comes on Saturday, that's today.

But last night I prayed and strugged over what I did wrong and what I should have done to get that deadbolt out of the wall so the door would open. I could easily install a door knob. But the door must be open so I can work on both sides of the door at once. Well, something interesting happened. The good Lord, through the power of the Holy Ghost, told me precisely what I should have done three days earlier. I should have taken a hacksaw and cut off the end of the deadbolt and "el-zippo" the door would fly open. Leaving, of course, the end of the bolt that is stuck in the striker plate for me to pull out after using my array of Phillips screwdrivers to remove two screws and easily pull off the plate from the door jamb.

It sounded easy, but I told myself - well, actually it was my wife who told me - "You're not going back there. She's got an $80 promise from a door expert, and she's willing to pay that amount to get you off the job. "Fine," I said. "I didn't want the job in the first place."

So the moral of the story, or my question, is this: why did the good Lord wait until I wasn't in the picture any more on that job to tell me in my sleep how to fix the problem? I don't know. It usually works the other way around. He tells you before you do the job, but not this time. If there is more to this story, I promise to write a follow up to this minor tragedy in the life of a man. Afterall, I am just a man, not a magician.