Juvenile Larceny

[LCanal]

Following a coversation at work.

I was just wondering how many out there have stuffed an offspring through a small bathroom window after having locked themselves out of the house. An adventure for all?

[staceyv]

it happened to me when I was young

[Happy Monkey]

I was the "go through" guy many a time as a wee lad.

[BigV]

count me in.

[wolf]

A friend of mine had her then 3 year old son lock her out of her McMansion with the special security locks and alarm system.

No amount of cajoling would have helped the little guy get his mommy back, because they had those stupidass doors that require a key on both sides to open them.

She called the local police for assistance. The officer sized up the situation, checked the reachable windows and found them all securely locked, and did what he had to do.

He pulled a set of lockpicks out of his back pocket and was in the house in 15 seconds.

Possibly slightly less.

Let the be a lesson to you all.

[russotto]

Lesson 1: Double-cylinder deadlocks suck. (also are illegal on residences in many areas, for obvious reasons)

Lesson 2: Don't use builder grade Kwikpick or Schlage F locks if you want any sort of security against surreptitious entry.
(but note if you use Medeco or another high-security brand, you're just about screaming "SOMETHING GOOD HERE TO STEAL" to the local criminal community)

As a latchkey kid who sometimes forgot his key, I used all sorts of methods to get in. Most adventurous was going through the laundry room window, on the second floor from the ground, using a ladder taken from the (unlocked) garage. There was a fan in the window, which I successfully knocked inside the house. Unfortunately in doing so I knocked the ladder out from under me. I was pretty much committed to climbing in at that point.

[jaguar]

BiLock are the way to go if you want a decent lock. Of course if you really want something secure a good bank vault is the way to go.

[zippyt]

A company named ABLOY ( i think ) makes double sides rounded keys , VERRRRRRRRY hard to pic even with the jig to pick them from the mnfg , or so a lock smith i once knew said

[footfootfoot]

We lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building. Once for fun I climbed up the defunct dumbwaiter shaft (it had been a very fancy building in its heyday) to my apartment and knocked on the door while my mother was in the kitchen. haha

It wouldn't have gotten me in since it had a one sided latch.

[Tonchi]

LOL That question brings back some memories alright! When I was in about 5th grade, my family was building a new ranch-style house in the country. It was in January or February, while my dad was away on the tobacco market, so mom took us out to see how the house was coming along. After driving all the way out there, we discovered that our new house was locked tight as a drum and we couldn't get in. We couldn't walk around and peek in the windows because the entire site was solid mud and water. The workmen had painted inside the day before, though, and we could see that the laundry window off the back porch had been left open a crack to let the fumes out. So my mom told me to see if I could get the window open far enough to crawl in and unlock the back door. I was an extremely plump little kid in those days, and I could have easier done chin-ups than to hoist myself up to that high ledge, but somehow between my mom and my sister they pushed me through the window and onto my head in the laundry room. As I was letting them in the back door, a truck came racing up the muddy driveway. It was the builder, somebody had called him and reported that some people were breaking into one of the new houses. Fortunately for us, in those days people knew practically everybody for a mile around and the person who saw us just dialed the builder's number instead of the police

[xoxoxoBruce]

Wasn't necessary. When my Dad sold the house I grew up in he had to replace the locks because he didn't know where the keys were. The doors had never been locked in 20 years.