become a key person

Class. Close your textbooks and put them under your desk. I have a quiz for you.

Yesterday, we chatted about the fact that my car fob will not open the front door to my house (open, sesame). Actually, we talked about the ravages of aging, but let's call it a door lock issue for the purpose of today's discussion.

The photograph is of my bedroom door that leads out onto the patio. It also has a lock that does not work with my car fob. I need to search in my pocket for my set of keys whenever I want to lock or unlock the door.

You can see the keys. Now, which way am I going to turn the key to open the door? Clockwise or anticlockwise?

In my brief experience of living in Mexico, either answer is certainly possible. I lived in a house for several years that had two successive gates to enter the garden. On one gate, the key needed to be twirled clockwise to open the gate. The other required an anticlockwise twist.

I finally decided the reason was simple. One gate swung to the left, one to the right. The lock mechanisms were simply installed upside down from each other. A perfect Mexican solution.

Not so, in my house. All doors swing in the same direction. But the front door has one solution; the four bedroom doors have the opposite solution.

The internet can often be our friends in such matters. At least, those in which I have had no training.

The most common answer is that there is no "correct" way for locks to be installed. Having said that, most of the sites say it is standard for doors that enter the house from the outside to lock by turning anticlockwise and unlock by turning clockwise -- unless it is a dead bolt. If it is a dead bolt, then the key almost always is twisted toward the door jamb -- mimicking the action of the bolt. Internal doors follow the deadbolt rule. Generally.

Well, my house did not quite get that memo. Or maybe it did.

As you know from various underwear-related stories on this blog, my front door latches automatically. There is no handle on the outside of the door. To lock the door, though, I treat it as if it were a deadbolt. Because it is. Lock toward the jamb. Unlock away from the jamb.

You have probably already guessed the answer to my bedroom door quiz. Even though the locks are dead bolt-based, the answer is just the opposite. To lock the door, the key turns away from the jamb (clockwise). To open -- well, you already have the drill.

I have never owned a house that had locks on internal doors. Maybe they did, but when you live alone, what's the point? I am not even certain there was a door on bathroom.

But the bedroom doors are not really interior doors. They open onto the patio. And, though I like to pretend it is the largest room in my house, it is the Grand Outdoors. Almost as natural as Yosemite. And a lot less crowded.

I had thought of having the locks on the bedroom doors replaced with locks where the keys would turn in conformance with the front door. But that struck me as being far too Swedish.

Plus there is a certain amusement quotient in watching my house guests trying to figure out the door puzzle. Some just give up and leave their rooms unlocked. Omar, for instance, neither locks his bedroom door nor double-locks the front door.

Knowing the key code is almost like belonging to some secret society. The Masons. The Illuminati. Or Sam's Club.

Let's call it The Sacred Order of Key Lore. Why not? It is my essay.

I would get you a guest pass, but you first need to know how to use a set of a keys in any Mexican house.

I wish you well.