The Day (Night) I Got Locked Out

By Todd Cannon

I can't remember if I wrote this one down before or not.  Forgive me if you have already read it somewhere.

The curfew rule that I remember is that I had to be home by 12:30 a.m. when I was out on a Date.  This way I could get the girl home by Midnight and then have a generous 30 minutes to make it home on time.  Many of the girls I dated did not have a Midnight curfew though so I would figure out how long it took to drive from their house to our house and try to arrive home right at 12:30 a.m.  I actually got pretty good at it but if anything went wrong I usually had no margin for error (which, of course, is what the 30 minutes was suppose to give me but I was to young and foolish to recognize that) 

There was a time in late 1983 or early 1984 that I had a string of bad luck and I was late getting home several times in a row.  Dad was not amused.  He told me that I had better be home on time in the future.  The very next time I was out on a Date I tried to make it home on time (or you know my version of trying to cut it as close as I could) but with one thing or another I was about 90 seconds late.  I would set my digital watch to the Nauvoo Bell on KSL Radio and I know Dad did the same thing so I could look and see exactly what time it was.  As I grabbed the door knob to get in it was LOCKED.  I figured Dad must have stood there and locked the door at the stroke of 12:30 so that if I was not home on time I would have to knock to get in.   I was not sure what to do but I looked through the Living Room window and saw Doug getting a drink of water at the Kitchen Sink, so I walked around back and tapped on the Kitchen window (scaring Doug in the process) and got Doug to let me in the back door.  I asked him if Dad was really mad because he locked me out because I was late again.  Doug looked at me kind of funny and said, "Mom and Dad are asleep.  I think they locked the door about 2 hours ago." So with some hope I went downstairs to tell Mom and Dad I was home.  They were asleep and Mom even apologized for forgetting I was out and locking the door.  I told her that was okay, Doug was up and let me in so there was no harm done. Then I quickly went to bed before anyone asked what time it was and what time I actually got home. 

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