Sometimes your locker won’t open. 10-14-26. 8-15-30. 23-36-27. Whatever your combination is, it’s just not working right now. You’re locked out of your own world of stuff. You feel your anger simmering like Mt. St. Helens in 1980. You try the combination over and over again, yet the lock stays clamped shut. You start to doubt yourself. Was that really the combination, or did you just imagine it? Also, are you smelling burned toast? Because that can be the sign of a small stroke.
Maybe it’s 12-40, not 40-12? And then you do it again and—rattle rattle rattle rattle—it’s still locked. Tick tick tick tick tick. You’ve got one minute until the bell rings. What do you do?
1. Freak out.
Kick your locker and yell at it. “Stupid locker!” Rattle the handle and pry fruitlessly at the edges with your fingertips, like an outlaw hanging onto the precipice of a cliff. Get all pre-K on that locker and tell it you hate it and you’re never going to use it again. Throw books at it. New Moon. The Scarlet Letter. And now your bio text—uh oh, here comes the Vice Principal. Quick, whistle casually while trying the combination one more time—(click) whoops! Oh sure, NOW it opens. But now it doesn’t matter because you’re getting hauled down to the office where someone is going to call your mom who will have to leave work early to come pick you up.
Nice.
2. Seethe in silent frustration.
This HAS to be the combination. It just HAS to. You’ve done it millions of times. Why would it stop working now? But it’s not working. What the !*@#&$8? Okay, calm down. Do it one more time. 5-25-30. Rattle rattle rattle. Drat! Shoot, there’s the bell. Okay, you know what, fine, you’re going to be late, but it’s not the worst thing that could happen to you. There are children in a desert somewhere who have to eat Cream of Wheat for every meal and fend off flies that are larger than the average house cat, so this is not such a big—DANG IT!!!!
5-25-30. Shoot. 5-25-30. What is wrong with this world?!!? 5-25-30. Locked. 5-25-30 futile rattle 5-25-30-5-25-30-5-25-30-5-25-30 AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
3.Walk away from the locker.
Sometimes we can’t get everything we want in life, and that’s okay. So you don’t have your lab manual for the frog dissection. That gives you a good excuse to just not do it. If you think about it a little bit, you are probably more into live frogs than dead ones in wax trays anyway. Or maybe this provides you with a good excuse to borrow a manual from that person two seats back you have a crush on. Sure, frog dissection manuals are not terribly romantic, but this isn’t really about content. It’s about opportunity.
Your locker is sulking, it’s having a tantrum, and there is nothing you can do about that. What you can do is just take the stuff you’ve got and head to class. When you get back to your locker next time, chances are it will work again. In other words, when one door won’t open, there’s a chance there’s another window somewhere that's already open, and the breeze feels pretty good.
Does your locker hate you?
Related post: "It's Not a Big Deal," and Other Annoying Things Your Friends Say When You're Upset
Topics: School
Tags: annoying things, lockers
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