The Pen Unlocks Us All
Not long ago I lived in an apartment along a busy street in Saint Paul. The domicile was a solid brick building that had fallen into disrepair as the owner/landlord didn’t do much in the upkeep department. Nowhere was this more apparent when it came to the locks that held the doors shut and the random, late night Saint Paul wanderers and up-to-no-gooders out. I became aware of just how bad the locks were one night when I absentmindedly locked myself out of the main door to the building. Drawing on a whole host of spy movie fantasies and Magnum P.I. pedagogy, I decided to try picking the lock myself. I dug through my bag and came up with a black Bic pen that had a straight metal clip on the cap. I bent and pulled the clip off the pen, inserted it into the lock and within seconds, I was bouncing up the stairs to my second floor flat. At first, I thought about putting an immediate call into my landlord and berating him with the highlights of my story. But then I realized that, probably sooner rather than later, I would again lock myself out of my apartment and it would be nice to be able to have a Bic pen back-up plan. In my tenure at the apartment, I probably ended up employing this technology at least half a dozen times.

And so I was only slightly shocked after reading a forwarded article in the Times, from a Vancouverite who has recently had his BMX snatched from the peace loving streets of B.C, that told about the Bic pen’s power over the expensive and seemingly bulletproof Kryptonite lock. Beware. It turns out that Kryptonite owners the world over are now helpless against the stealthy ease with which their bicycles can be so easily unburdened from the encumberment of their protector. My advice? Invest heavily in the Bic corporation.