#513 – Gap

I think the worst part about locking yourself out of your house or locking your keys in the car is when you realize it as it is happening. You are stepping away from your front door pulling the doorknob behind you or you have just pushed off from your car door as your brain does a tiny little… “uh… waitWaitWAIT!!!” You have just enough time to look back and see that sliver of an opening vanish and a very annoying part of your day begin.

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51 thoughts on “#513 – Gap”

  1. Just Ryan says:

    its always important to put the right pants on…

  2. PsychoDuck says:

    I’m so glad I’ve never accidentally left my keys behind and locked myself out…

    I did something somewhat similar once, though. I went out without my keys because I thought someone would be home when I got back, but they weren’t. That kinda sucked. At least a family friend let me stay at their place until someone came home to let me in.

    The Duck Has Spoken.

  3. Mikael says:

    Never have I heard (read) truer words …

  4. KMFPL says:

    I used to get to work, turn off the engine, then keep listening to the radio until the song or talk show I was listening to ended.

    I invariably left the keys in the ignition.

    I now carry a spare car key in my wallet.

  5. blaz42 says:

    I have locked myself out several times when I left my keys at home, and it is really annoying. Once I had to pay the locksmith for opening the door as the rest of my family was out through the weekend. What I don’t understand is how anybody can lock their keys in car. You just have the keys to lock with them or don’t and can’t lock the door. Is it in US like that you can’t open the door from outside?

  6. Carpaccio says:

    It happens to me 12 out of 15 times.

    I’m really scatterbrained about my belongings and my pockets.

  7. LazerWulf says:

    One of my housemates habitually, almost as if it was an OCD, locks doors, even when there are people home. One time, as I was taking out the trash, said housemate left the house and locked the doors, with my keys inside and nobody else home.

    Fortunately, another one of my housemates habitually leaves his window unlocked.

  8. I keep a spare key in my wallet. If someone ever steals my wallet, they’ll get my car too…

  9. Homsar says:

    Great stuff… My first comment ever… This stuff is always great. I’ve been watching your stuff every (week) day for the past 6-9 months due to an ad I saw for this site on the f@nb0y$ site.

    The Coffee Cup Offspring Has Spoken.

  10. neil says:

    Biff: Open the door!
    HAL: I’m sorry Biff, I can’t do that.

  11. Raikana says:

    @blaz42: I know there are some cars in America that will lock themselves automatically. All the cars my family ever had like that have been very erratic, so I don’t know when, but some car doors do lock themselves.

  12. insertnamehere says:

    I’ve never locked myself out of my house, but I have had other people lock me out of my house. that was annoying. and I’ve noticed the brain’s wait….waitWaitWAIT! thing. Normally when I’m kicking a ball or jumping off a seemingly small ledge. or clicking a link on a page. or talking. wow, I guess it happens pretty much all the time.

  13. SEA says:

    I’m glad I’ve never locked myself out ^_^

    I only leave the keys in the lock and go. (Which can be considered good or bad)

  14. MaskedMan says:

    Open the pod bay door, HAL. HAL..?

    I’m sorry, Biff. I can’t do that…

  15. KMFPL says:

    Blaz42-The cars that make it difficult to lock yourself out is a pretty new feature to me, and I have no idea if it’s standard. Of course, I drive a ’99 Camry – which won’t let me leave the keys IN THE IGNITION, but is perfectly content to let me leave them on the seat…

    Of course, if you only lock your doors with that new-fangled remote control thingie, that’s not a problem. But I don’t drive fancy cars like that! 😉

  16. Gregg says:

    It was Rich Hall that called the split second before the locked car door closes that you remember “MY KEYS ARE IN THERE!” as an “Idiosecond”.

  17. Batdan says:

    I love driving my Prius. It has the smartkey system installed so I never have to take my keys out of my pocket. That leads to a lot less worry that I’ll leave my keys in the car. Now if only my house had the smart key system… hmm invention time!

  18. THawk says:

    I once had that sickening realization just as the car door went “click.” With less then an hour before I had to catch my flight, I ended up paying a locksmith $150 to rush out and unlock the door. I made my flight with 5 minutes to spare, but in retrospect I should have saved my $150. I was on vacation in Hawaii and the flight I barely caught was bringing me back home to the Arctic.

  19. Aldaris says:

    … Which is why most people have a spare key hidden somewhere outside.

  20. GodathonOne says:

    True story…
    That happened to me this morning right as I left for work.

  21. cyberspace95 says:

    One day when my friend was bored and had nothing to do, he made one of those Trading Card Games. One of the cards he made was called ‘Other Pants’, and it would let you take any card that you have in your deck or had discareded, because you “must have left it in your other pants.”

  22. Jon M. says:

    When I first got the truck that I am still currently driving, I had not been driving for about a year at that point. Not being used to having to check for keys when getting out of a vehicle, I locked the keys in my truck twice in the same weekend. Unfortunately for me, the same locksmith came to retrieve my keys both times. The second time he said, “Hey, how was your weekend?” I was not amused.

  23. Anton T says:

    hahahahha damn
    that happened to my mom and i some time ago…she regularly throws the keys in the trunk of the car when she opens it…so needless to say that after we went shopping,i didnt exactly notice that…you can guess the rest when i closed the trunk and the car locked itself

    Best part of it…we were on the french side of the border,i live about an 40min drive from there…

  24. BlueKitsune says:

    The only thing worse then locking your keys in you car is locking your keys in the car while the car is running! Lucky after an hour or so we got the door open with a coat hanger somehow. And the times I lock my self out of my house I just check all the windows to find a open one lol works 90% of the time. The other 10% I just lay on the grass and take a nap till someone comes home.

  25. Josh says:

    My mom has locked her keys in the car more times than I can count. That’s why I now own a lockpick. Pretty handy device, if I do say so myself. Not sure what good it’d do on a spaceship, though…

    Great work, Chris!

  26. blaz42 says:

    @Raikana,KMFPL: thanks for the info, I wasn’t aware of this. Most cars in europe (as far as I know) will not lock their doors automatically when you close them.

    Well, lockpicks are pretty handy but so difficult to obtain…I need to make some by myself since I don’t know where could I get some.

  27. Erlynne says:

    I actually locked my keys in my car at a gas station a little while ago. Luckily, I was conveniently across from a fire department and they let me in. 😀

  28. Knight Blazer says:

    My brother had the same thing happen to him with his car. The only difference is that he has no control over his temper. After trying to unlock the car for FOUR hours with a Slim-Jim, he finally said F— it, took off his shirt, wrapped his fist with it, and punched out the side window. After two months he still has’nt had it fixed. His reason? “That way I can’t lock myself out of the damn car anymore.”

  29. Monkeyman says:

    Great strip, funny concept.My dad’s a locksmith, gotta show this to him.
    @blaz42, dude most cars have a button in the inside of the door that you push to lock the doors.
    Whatta you driving a 30 yr old car?Even my ’83 van has power locks where ya just push down
    one lock and all the doors lock.

  30. FWTrump says:

    Has happened to me twice. The first time I was home at the time and had a spare car key in the house and an alternate non-key way into the house (through the garage after hitting the key code). The second time at a gas station and thus was subjected with having to call someone to get the spare key. Now I carry that spare key in my wallet.

  31. Erik says:

    I recently locked my keys in the car about 500 miles from home in the middle of the night. Frustrated and desperate, I jammed the key from my old apartment into the lock as hard as I could and twisted it. It was just enough to force the lock mechanism to turn and unlock.

  32. speearr says:

    Poor Biff…..this is the end for sure…..

  33. Wizard says:

    After locking myself out a couple of times, I took to locking the door from the outside with the key, for both home and car. This makes it pretty much impossible to lock yourself out. Unless you lose the key, of course…

  34. DGexe says:

    This has luckily never really happened to me (I have odd ways of getting in… one time, I couldn’t find the spare key we have hidden when I returned from school, so I had to climb through the doggie door to get in. Aaahh, good times). I specificly remember a time when I was about six or seven. My grandma and I had gotten out to go get something from a store, with her German Shedpard in the car (he was a puppy at the time)… and he accidently struck the “lock” button with his paws. Ka-click, all the doors were locked, with the dog and keys inside.

  35. DracoZereul says:

    This has happened to me once with my car, and about three or four times at home.

    The car one was simple. Went to the bank, after taking the keys out of the ignition I began rifling through the various trash in my car to find the checks I was to cash, and had left my keys on the seat. Thankfully, I had my phone on hand, and my parents brought me my spare key. Lucky me, because they were about 2 seconds away from leaving for the weekend.

    The house incidents were all the same circumstances, with the same solution. Basically, it was back in High School and my first year of college. Either Mom or Dad would usually get home before me, so I got used to leaving home without my keys. Then I’d get home and find out they went out to a bar or something and wouldn’t be home for a few hours. Solution: We live in a house whose window screens can slip right off with little to no effort, and I never close the windows in my room. Grab the ladder, shimmy the screen so as not to damage it, and slip right on in.

  36. AdmiralChaos says:

    i constantly lock myself out of the house, because i’m forgetful 🙁
    thats why we had the electronic keypad on the back door installed 😀
    hard to forget your own birthday >.>

  37. no name says:

    I like theme weeks. I always crave the next comic more than normal. And I bet tomorrows comic has something to do with re-entry. Could be wrong though.

  38. I just hope he didn’t leave it running.

  39. kruemi says:

    Yay… that’s a really bad one. One can only hope, that there is someone inside or Biff knows how to use the emergency entry.

    Worst thin that happened to me was, that I went skiing with 5 of my friends. I was the Driver and had borrowed the car of my parents. Everything went fine and we enjoyed the day to the last moment. When I wanted to unlock the car, I could not find the Keys in my pocket. First, my friends wouldn’t believe me, that I had no keys.
    It came out well. I had lost the keys in the restaurant around noon. and the keys where there. But the restaurant was high up in the mountain and the ski lifts had already stopped.
    Luck for us, that there where some workers up there building some stuff and just about to head home, so they could bring the keys…
    After this I always had spare keys, which I gave to someone else in the group.

  40. blaz42 says:

    @Monkeyman: well, umm…yup, my car si about 20 years old, has that locking button on its doors but doesn’t have central locking and will not allow you to lock the door when they are open…and I thought that it is like this with all cars, it seem logical to me to prevent people from locking out this way…seems like I was wrong with this one

  41. Bryce says:

    HAHAHA! I actually did lock my keys in the car at work today! I was so mad! But my dad came and bailed me out…

  42. taber_man says:

    I think my worst situation (and my only car-related locking of keys in car), was during winter, when I got into my car after getting my paycheck, starting the car, turning on the radio, and thinking I hit the unlock button. I got out, closed the door, went to open the back one, it was locked. went to open the front, it was locked. Car was running the whole time this happened. I’m just glad I had my phone in my pocket and not in the car XD

    The last time I was locked out of my house without knowing where the keys were was in elementary school.

    I have a key on me every schoolday now, since my keys with my USB drive for digi photo also have my house keys on them.

  43. Wolfpsyco says:

    I lock my keys in the car all the time.. I’ve been doing it before I started driving too! My dad though has the incredible foresight to have his own set of keys for each car. I even locked myself out of the car 60 miles away from home, twice. My dad wasn’t happy to say in the least XD I also locked myself out of the car once when I was picking up pizza for my co-workers, so I walked back to work with three boxes of pizza, and called my dad (since I forgot my cell phone at home) man I’m scatterbrained XD

  44. Torg says:

    @blaz42: That does make more sense. However, here in the United States logic is punishable by fines and possible jail time.

  45. GuyD says:

    Well, in the old days when cars didn’t had remote controls it was easy to lock away the key into the car. Just push the mechanical lock at the door, go out and close the door – done!

    I live in switzerlan and there its very hard to lock yourself out of the house. Because most doors have a handle instead a knob. So if you remeber your keys just after leaving, that will be very useful. But if you realize too late, well, than you can only hope that no burglars visit your home during your time off!

  46. LeeshaJoy says:

    I can top this. During my first week of college, I locked myself out of my dorm room… in my underwear.

    Don’t ask.

  47. The ill mannered M says:

    True dat, yo.

  48. Wendy says:

    I’ve locked myself out of my car…twice. It auto locks as soon as you turn the engine on.

  49. wisp says:

    and that is the reason i WELDED a spare house AND car key to my wallet chain

  50. brent says:

    my friend did that once, i had to climb through the tiny bathroom window to get in

  51. YukiSnowflake says:

    strange… how would you go about leaving a spare key outside the spaceship?
    secret panel? not voice activated, or course, as sound can’t travel in space.
    elementary, my dear. (jokes)

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