The “Locked” Direction
Two days ago I went buying a new laptop with my eldest son. Through a colleague from the scouts who works at an electronics discounter, we got quite a reduction and my son was looking forward to start gaming at home. My wife is going to inherit his old PC… Unfortunately his old mouse didn’t work with the new laptop, so both of my sons went yesterday evening to another nearby electronic discounter, one with his bike, the other with his moped. Half an hour later we got a phone-call with a cry for help: “My moped lock is blocking, I can’t open it again.” He had tried again and again, but it didn’t unlock. So I went there by car, tried myself, without success. I wondered why the key didn’t slip in, but thought, it’s because of some deformation.
We packed the moped into the car and arrived at the last minute before closing at the motorbike shop of our village. The mechanic took a power saw and cut open the lock. And then we had to buy a new lock…
At home we hardly had told the story to my wife and showed her the broken lock that she found, my son had tried to use the – identically looking – bicycle key instead of the moped lock key…
It reminded me of the many times we are looking for a solution with a fix idea in mind and try to go into the “locked” direction. Sometimes it helps that a friend, looking from the outside, gives us a hint to see that the easy solution is very close.
