The good thing about a lock is that it’s not worth stealing. You don’t have to be too smart to know that, and the people I work around are all very smart. Nobody steals a lock. This is a good thing because I am very forgetful. I stopped working out for a month because I thought it would be more fun to drink like a fish and smoke like a chimney and work until late. When I came back the next time to the gym my padlock was laying on top of the lockers like I’d left it there the night before.
Nobody steals a lock. It’s not because people respect locks, it’s because if you don’t have a key or know the combination a lock is only worth as much as the metal it’s made of. As long as your lock is not very heavy or very golden, no one will steal it.
I was thinking this the next night when I had left my lock at the gym again and it was there just the same, and I had no more thought it than I turned around and saw a big shiny U-Haul padlock hanging on an open locker with the key in it. I looked around the locker room but there was nobody it could belong to.
I’m not a natural thief. I like the sneaking around parts, those are fun, but I don’t like taking other people’s stuff. The whole night when I was working out I was saying to myself that you ought to do things in life that you’re never going to have a chance to do again, and when are you going to have a chance to steal a lock that’s actually worth something?
I do a lot of security work so my sense of irony almost demanded I steal that lock. When I went back to the locker room it was still there so I showered and dressed and put on my hoodie and in one smooth motion pulled the lock from the locker and put it in my pocket.
I didn’t look around to see if anybody had seen me because I knew they hadn’t and if I had it would only make me look suspicious. I slung my pack over my shoulder and I walked out of that locker room and I made for the front door.
When I was sure that nobody had seen me, and no one was going to stop me, and I had without a doubt got away with it, I stopped by the empty front desk and took a stick-it note and wrote “found on locker 87″ and stuck it to the lock, and left it there. I signed it with a big enigmatic K like I was Zorro or something. Or Korro, anyway. What do I need with a lock, when I’ve already got mine?
Had mine. I left it in the gym on Friday and when I came back today to work out it was gone. I guess not everybody’s so smart. It could still turn up somewhere, though. I’m very forgetful.
