Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

So my landlord installed these new self-closing self-locking gates to keep the riff-raff out, and he sent out an email advising us to remember our gate key if we go to take the garbage out, and what do I do? I take my garbage out (horray for taking the garbage out!) and I definitely do not bring my gate key. I bring my cell phone, though, because it is 7:55 and at 8:00 someone is supposed to be coming to my apartment to pick up my old TV.

So I am locked outside my apartment gate at 7:57 envisioning a scenerio where TV dude shows up and I have to tell him, sorry, I'm locked out, and what happens then? Does he stay with me and make chit chat while we wait for someone to come in or out? Does he leave me standing there in the semi-rain? Do I go around the corner and hide and ignore my phone and just pretend I am not home?

And where the hell are all my neighbors, anyway? I hear them in the courtyard ALL THE TIME, yapping and drinking. Don't you people have parties to go to? Don't you have dogs to walk? (I know you have dogs; I have seen all the varieties of dogs coming to and fro.) Moreover, where are my dependable friends? I give you people keys for situations just like this one. I have taken care of both your dogs while you were out of town, and one of them ripped my favorite jeans. Answer your damn phones.

And finally a guy pulls up, and I'm thinking "please, please be a neighbor, and not someone who wants my TV," and I introduce myself, even though I've lived here for two years, and I ask him if he lives here, and tell him how happy I am to see him, and thank you thank you thank you, and I still don't know his name, but I think we might share a wall.

And the TV guy never came. And there's a mysterious water leak in my wall causing paint tumors, but that's another story. And I am going to bury a gate key in a very secret hidden place, so I never have to wait for other peoples' comings and goings again.