My sister locked herself out of the house. She called me, with her kids panicking in the background, to find a locksmith who worked on Sundays.

I suggested that I just drive down and get the spare key from somebody. It would probably only take 30 minutes, less than a locksmith.

Unfortunately, the KeyMaster wasn't where she expected him to be, so I arrived without it.

Her little daughter was very disappointed.

Her son barely noticed; he'd spent the time catching caterpillars and building them a "playground". It was a pile of leaves in the driveway. Good thing I'd decided to park in back, or I could've become a natural disaster.

I gave her the number, then offered to try my hand at breaking and entering. She showed me the door she had been working on. She'd crushed the inside of the lock with a screwdriver, and attacked the latch with a screwdriver. She'd tried to remove the hinges, but they were capped and tight.

I got an old hangar and bent it into a good shape. As I fooled with it, she warned me: "You realize that if this works, I'll have to simultaneously admire and hate you."

By leaning my weight against the door, I found that I could free it enough to move it. The first two attempts slipped right past the latch, but a bend with a pair of long-nosed pliers helped prevent that from happening again.

As I opened the door, the children cried out in delight, and Beki exclaimed, "Look what Uncle Jude did!"

I felt like Leonardo daVinci in Ever After.

Yes, I shall go down in history as the man who opened a door!