Great.  My mom forgot to hide the key.  Again.  I’m locked out.  Again.  I guess I should start from when all of this key nonsense began.  My mom loses keys a lot.  Like a lot a lot.  So much to the point that the key makers at Home Depot know what she's coming in for everytime she walks through the door.  Now, my family doesn’t lock our doors very often, because out of the 6 of us, someone is almost always home.  However, when my mom decides to take the day off and go somewhere with my step dad, she locks the door.  And always fails to mention it to me. 

When I was a kid, I never had this problem, because I was almost always accompanied by an adult who had a copy of the house key.  And I’m sure you’re thinking, why don’t you just carry your own key, Briana? And I’ll tell you why.  Because my mom always asks for mine, because she loses hers, and forgets to then get me another copy.  So, over the past couple months, every day she takes off, I make sure to remind her in the morning to leave the (now one) key we have in our secret hiding place because I almost always get home before her.  And for a few months, it worked.  That was, until yesterday.

I got off the bus.  I make the 5 minute walk home, up the hill, and around the corner.  And it was hot.  Very very hot.  As I’m walking up the walkway to my front door, I remember that my mom took off for the day, to meet with my cousin for lunch.  In Yonkers.  So I make my way over to the super secret hiding spot and lift up the rock.  That’s funny.  There’s no key.  I put it down.  Lift it up again.  And believe it or not, still no key.  So I think, oh maybe she’s home and just didn’t go.  I ran to the door and rang the doorbell.  Waited a few seconds...and nothing.  I rang again.  And again.  And again.  And still...nothing.  Despite me being tired, frustrated, sweaty and about to blow up with frustration at my mom, I then notice something else.  My phone is on 8%.  Before I can freak out about that, I call my mom.   She answers. 

“Hi sweetie!”
“Hi mom...soooo where are you”
“Yonkers”
“Ohh okay.  And the key?” **silence**
“Mom?”
“ummmm oops”
“When will you be home”
“Around 5” (it was 2:20).
“Goodbye!!”

After that painful conversation, my phone was now down to 3%.  And I knew if I were going to be waiting for her for nearly 3 hours I was NOT going to do it without my phone. 

 
As I walked around my house checking the side door, back door and all the lower floor windows, they were all locked.  And this was also unusual.  Someone HAD to be home.  But where would they be?  As someone who has lived in my house my entire life, I know that there is no place you can’t hear the doorbell in that house.  Especially when it has been rang 7 times.  And I’m sure you’re wondering how I don’t know how to get in if my mom always forgets to leave the key.  And my answer is this: she is normally 5 minutes away from home, not 3 hours.  So waiting isn’t as brutal.  It’s also never 90 degrees and with a dying cell phone.  Which by the way, died at this point. 

Now as my phone is dead, and my impatience is doubling every minute, I though about the second floor windows.  Now most of them I couldn’t reach, but there was one.  My mom’s bedroom window.  I couldn’t reach it without the help of a side railing on the steps going down to my backyard, but even then, it was well over my head.  I jumped.  And keep in mind, I jumped while on top of a 6 inch railing.  But I opened the window.  And i decided that while my phone was dead, what better way to spend the next three hours than trying to jump through this window and in the meantime, also not fall to my death.  Now i’m sure that’s an exaggeration, but there definitely could’ve been some serious bone breakage going on if my foot slipped on this railing.
So the window was open.  And I could see that both my cat and dog had heard me struggling to slide the screen up, but I did it.  My hands just reached over the window.  In other words, my hands were inside, as I was standing on the railing.  How would i be able to pull myself up? Should I just wait for my mom? Maybe my neighbor has a phone charger? 

But I jumped.  I jumped off of the railing and pulled myself up to the window so that at this point my head was in.  Oh s***.  What did I do.  There was no way i could muster enough strength to pull my entire body through this window.  But after about a minute of dangling in fear, I did.  And as my dog Kobe stood looking at me in awe, I layed on my parents floor laughing at my dramatic triumph to get through the window.  And I was feeling quite accomplished of my ninja-like moves. 

So I make my way down the hall to my room, to grab my charger and then unlock the front door.  And as I turn around, I see my brother.  Sitting on the couch with his headphones on.