The things we do in the name of friendship!

I've been blessed with some great friends in life. There are four in my life right now that have been with me through thick and thin; literally! When God blesses you with friends like these, somehow life becomes so much more easy to get through. Other times we're just blessed with the craziness and laughter of what is. Monday evening was one of those times.

One of my dear friends used to live here, but she moved away a couple of years ago. We still get to see each other as she comes back a couple of times each year. They (meaning her and her hubs) own a houseboat and keep it out at the lake. It's Superbowl time, which means her husband will be having his yearly Super Bowl weekend with his friends out at the boat. Monday evening she called and asked if I'd head out to the boat with her to put some type of shine on the floor. This really meant that she was going to be mopping and putting in hard labor. Of course, she just wanted company, but honest, I had every intention of working by her side.

Anyway, we headed out to the lake, which is a about a 45 minute drive, laughing and talking all the while. We finally get the the lake and hop out of the truck. It's about 8:30 pm by now and it's not real warm. We only had sweatshirts on, so, well, it was a bit chilly. Anyway, we grab the mops, drinks, and buckets and look for a cart to take the stuff down to the boat. She finds a cart, we load it up and away we go!

There isn't a soul in site as we laugh our way down. We finally get there and attempt to get in. No such luck; the key that her husband gave her before he left town won't even fit in the hole! We stood there trying, in the dark, for a few moments with no such luck, so she calls her husband. He tells her where to find a flashlight (think very small, batteries almost completely dead, minimal yellow lighted flashlight!). While I shine the dead flashlight, the conversation goes something like this:

Her: "The key doesn't work."
Him: "I know it works, I just used it.""
Her: "I doesn't fit."
Him: "Turn it over and it will work. It's the right key."

(I'm thinking at this point that really, we are not idiots, we know how to use a key, but hey, ok!"

Him: "Are you using the silver, square key?"
Her: "There is no silver square key, it's a silver triangle key."
Him: "No, it's a silver square key."
Her: "The only square key is the main, gold gate key that we just used to get in."
Him: "You need to push it in."
Her: "The key won't go in! It's a house key, it's too big. It will not even go in!"

(Being the great friend that I am, I wait silently through this conversation. OK, well I tried, but it was just so comical! I mean, we're freezing, we've tried all four keys on the key ring several times, we KNOW it's not going to work, but he's insisting we're just doing it wrong. Humor is definitely needed at this time!")

So the conversation continues like this for a bit longer until dear hubby finally realizes that we are not going to get in the door with the key. So what's a guy to do? He thinks we should try using it on the back door! Ok….so we head to the back door with the minimal flashlight and proceed to try and use the magically wrong key on the wrong door. Nope…doesn't work there either.

Her dear husband comes up with a great idea at this point. Just break in! Now, please understand, he's an ex-cop, they've already had a break-in so he's put screws in all the windows so that no one can break in again, but ok…we'll try! He patiently waits on the phone as we go from window to window trying to slide them open even though they are locked and have screws preventing them from budging. Then we try the credit card thing…nope, it's doesn't work either. By now, I'm freezing, dying of laughter, and generally having another great moment with my friend.

After about an hour of this, we finally convince him that we are not getting into the houseboat to mop that floor after all. He's decided to call security by now to have them get the spare key to the boat, so we head back up the long trek to the truck to wait for security. We're laughing at the silliness of this whole thing as we're walking back across the pier when a giant fish jumps out of the lake and attempts to eat me! I jump into said friend while she laughs at me. We laugh that this would make a great blog…us landing in a cold lake in the middle of the night as a fish attempts to eat me all because we couldn't break into a houseboat because we don't know how to use a key properly!

We make it back up to the truck, have a few more laughs and climb in to wait for the security guard that her husband has contacted. About that time, we notice the security truck drive down to the dock, so we drive down to meet him thinking he may be looking for us. I mean, why else would he be there except to rescue us, right? I'm sure he had nothing better to do!

So we drive up and roll down the window and you can tell by the look on his face that he was NOT enjoying his job at the moment! (He's on the phone with her husband trying to explain that someone else has to come down to open the guard office to look for the key and he has to go on his rounds.) Then her husband hangs up and calls her while the guard stands there ever so patiently smoking his cigar.

The other guard shows up so they go off to have a private chat about what we can only imagine is how much they really want to spend their night searching for a key for the two silly women in the truck who only want to mop a floor. The second guard comes over to the truck to ask what the key looks like while the other guard goes off to make his rounds. My friend offers to go with him to find it, but we're not allowed, so she describes the key and he goes off to find it. (We see two other guards join the first two at the guard office and have a chat about which we are just so sure having nothing to do with the two of us sitting in the van or the husband that won't leave them alone!

A bit later the first guard comes back to the truck, still working on that cigar, and asks us to go down with him to find the key because they can't find it. Really, it is rather funny, don't you think? So we walk down the pier making sure not to be attacked by any giant fish on the way. The other guard is sitting there with the drawer open going through all of the keys. Nope, not that one. No, that isn't it. This goes on as he makes it through several keys. My friend patiently tells him once again that it is a key on a black tie thing. He shows her the only key like that with the name of Kevin so and so. Hmmm…didn't her husband say that it was Kevin who had the key last? But no, their key seems to be missing and if this Kevin had it then he probably locked it away in his toolbox and no one has the key except for him. All this to say, we were out of luck! By now it was almost ten at night and it seemed that those floors were not going to get mopped after all! But we tried, we really did!

We laughed our way back up to the truck once again and headed for home, all the while laughing about the things we do in the name of friendship!

And the end of the story? Turns out the security guard did have the key after all and we really did have the wrong key. I'd be willing to bet it was the key with Kevin's name on it!