Blast From The Past I: Common Sense

Hmm.

I'm starting this new 'Blast From The Past' to replace the fledging 'Legends Of Zelda', just to keep you guys entertained because that's what you all deserve when you come to my blog.

So, in this new issue, I hereby present to you...

How To Open A Cupboard Door

It was the year when I was in Secondary Three, and I was the class cheh-maire (chairman, but this means blind in hokkien) and in each class there was a metal cupboard for all of us to lock up our items and effects securly before going home.

This metal cupboard was approximately six foot high, and on top of the twin doors and highly sophisticated locking mechanisms, there was a metal bar, about four foot long and weighing approximately 5-7 kilos, to secure the doors and simultaneously prevent any alien captured alive and locked inside from breaking out.

Since I was the class cheh-maire, I naturally had the keys to the cupboard, and possession of the metal bar as well (in the event of a riot, this metal bar will prove to be very, very useful). And of course, as always the case involving anything more complicated than a post-it note, there will always be a point in time when stupid things will happen.

The handle to the cupboard doors was a simple twist-type of handle, where you just twist it clockwise and hear a loud click sound (yes, very important psychological ergonomics) you will be able to open the door without much hassle.

Similarly when closing, just twist the handle counter-clockwise, and hear the click sound again, you will know that the doors have been locked. Using the key, one will insert it into the lock right in the middle of the handle, and twist the key counter-clockwise to lock the whole thing up.

Unlocking it is just twisting the key clockwise.

One day, after the end of the day, I decided to lock up the cupboard and I had already left when I realised that i had forgotten to take one of my books, which was left inside the cupboard. I went back to class, and saw that some of my classmates had still remained behind.

I went up to the cupboard, and inserted the key and turned it clockwise. Then I tried to twist the handle clockwise, but the handle refused to budge. i tried to manhandle the thing, but it wouldn't budge. Thinking it must be crazy, I inserted the key and twisted it to the left, before twisting it to the right once more. It still refused to budge.

Thinking things couldn't get more demanding, I took up the 5-7 kilo metal bar and started bashing the handle from the left in an attempt to make the handle turn clockwise, which of course caught the attention of my classmates. You would notice your chairman trying to break open your class cupboard by bashing it with a four-foot long metal bar right? I was also cursing at it while I was bashing it, by the way.

One of them decided that bashing the thing wouldn't work as well, so he asked me to stop the bashing, and asked for the keys.

After fiddling around with it for ten seconds, he finally got it open.

Oh, and by the way, I had gotten the directions for opening the door all wrong that day, and that's why, even though I thought it was clockwise, I had done it the opposite way round.

The bloke who opened the cupboard then couldn't stop kidding me about that incident for a month or so.

Yeah, that was when i was lame before I knew I was lame.


Cheers,

Crawldaddy