I've been driving around with Allison's pipe crammed under candy bar wrappers and crumpled newspaper in an old soft drink cup in my backseat for almost two weeks. Somehow I ended up with it after the camping trip and have only been able to complete step one in giving it back to her. Bringing it along.

When I pulled in for my shit shift bussing tables on the patio today she was the first person I saw. Let me give you your pipe before I forget again, I said. And got it for her. Then I asked who was managing. Joe. Then I sought him out to make clear that there was no need for two busboys on a Thursday night. He felt the same way and wanted to run it by George (the other busser) before sending me home.

I started shooting shit out back with Ally and Amy waiting for the verdict when Joe snuck up behind and said, "Go Home." I patted my pockets -because I will put anything in any pocket- looking for keys. "Ladies," I started, which I always say before leaving multiple ladies, but stopped my goodnight when a full pat down revealed no lump of keys.

They were on the passenger seat of my locked, locked, locked, locked, 4x locked car. Where I for some reason dropped them when I retrieved Allison's pipe, and then casually locked the door not two seconds after.

Good thing about waiters and waitresses and busboys pre-dinner rush, they're bored. Allison shot downstairs for a wire hanger because she knew how to jimmy a door lock.

Saturn doors lock east to west however, horizontal instead of up and down we quickly discovered.

George, Colombia's Jean Reno in my eyes, lent a hand and eventually someone said... "Get Yimi," the pet name for Jimi, of Stella household basement fame, "He's got to know how to break into a car."

Yimi went to work. A short time later, someone noticed the passenger side door -we were working the driver's- was cracked just a millimeter. Enough to finagle the coat hanger inside the car, to fumble and scrape at a door lock that would take considerable pressure to click over. Three or four times the situation looked bleak. It was like trying to move a cinderblock with the tip of a cane pole.

Then, a lightbulb over Yimi's head. "Gimme your shoe lace," he demanded. First tell me why. "I'm gonna make a slipknot, and get it around the lock." I didn't rush to jerk my laces out.

At this point Allison was still performing a crude abortion on the driver's side with Amy looking on. Wiggling it around in the door womb, blindly hooking and clicking innards. Yimi, George and I were crowded around the slit of hope on the other side. It felt, momentarily, like a challenge on some reality show. Guys versus girls, first to unlock their door gets immunity.

Yimi, when he could no longer take the fruitless jimmying, jerked one of his shoe laces out, tied a slipknot, and eased the loop down into the car. Aiming for the wide, flat edge of the door lock. Except here the angle of the window kept the string an inch or so out from the lock, so with his other hand, he began coaxing the lasso onto the lock with one of the aforementioned coat hangers. It was not happening. Yimi had tables, so he flopped around the restaurant with a loose shoe for a while.

Then George, "Where are the keys at brrrrro?" On the seat, I said, and immediately got his lightbulb. In unison, "Hook The Keys!" We were overjoyed. It was straight out of a movie, hooking a key ring with some long flimsy thing. It was too good to be true we realized almost immediately. The fat black plastic on the key would never slip through the Slit of Hope.

But maybe it would? We had to try. Two or three times I hooked the pair of headphones that shared the seat, each time I tried to drop them out of the way but ended up bouncing them right back to the valley of the seat. Then Yimi was back, shoe relaced, he hooked the keys no problem, got them to the Slit of Hope, and then dropped them where they jingled into a crack and slipped into the floorboard in the backseat. With the sixteen visible water bottles -Amy counted- and countless cups.

This whole fiasco I didn't once doubt that human reasoning could figure it out. I was strangely optimistic the entire time. Then- BAM -I got a lightbulb. Hook the window crank, if we could pull it even a half a turn it would give us super breathing room, the space to slip in all kinds of things.

After a bit of this, George dropped the wire into the car. It was getting funny. I stormed the kitchen and found the spool of string used for wrapping meats and shit. We hacked off a length, tied it into another slipknot and I told Yimi to try and loop the knob on the window crank. Which he quickly did, and opened the window enough for a broom handle, which gave us the leverage to turn it another half crank, which gave us the space to fit an arm, which gave us the door lock.

Never has locking my keys in my car been such a fun and unifying experience. Cheers and high-fives abounded.

A great day at work.