Safe

We all have items in our possession we wish to keep safe, whether it be from the elements or just in safekeeping for memory purposes.

My parents never believed in safety deposit boxes at a bank, instead they always had a safe. And I'm not talking the kind you buy at big box stores that have a fire rating and small key, but I'm talking big, five inch think, combination lock safes.

So in my continual quest to aid in my father's downsizing I believe I will have so many stories for posts that it is mind boggling. This one involves, guess what, the safe.

My father keeps his will in the "safe" except that the safe is not locked and why you might ask, well, he lost the combination. And where could the combination be located? Well, possibly in the safe. Perfect.

In one of my visits I happened to turn the handle on the safe the wrong way and the bolts came out and now the door can't be closed. So the items in the safe were for sure not safe as the door was wide open.

Yesterday when visiting my father I had two tasks in mind. One to clear out a desk drawer of files and two, to find the combination of the safe, in his safe.

So as I'm sorting through files, with Dad's assistance of course, we got into a really good system.

"No good"
"Pitch"
"I wonder why I saved that?"

Exactly my thoughts.

Then we get to a file labeled Owner Manuals. This one I thought would be simple and easy, you either own it or not. I had no idea it would be a gold mine because inside on a teeny tine torn piece of paper about 1 by 3 inches was a safety lock combination.

Yes, a TEENY, TINY piece of paper. How my parents ever thought that this would be the way to store a safe's combination I will never know.

However that was not all, there were TWO more pieces (again teeny, tiny, paper must have been at a premium way back then) with combinations.

So did my dad know which combination was for which safe (he has two, obviously my parents at one point had a great deal to protect from thieves).

No.

I tried the one combination that seemed most logical, but to no avail. My dad tried to help by standing over my head, calling out the combination, as if I couldn't read it on my own. It didn't work. I may try to get my safe cracking brother to take a try. Or we will experiment with the other combinations.

So at this point, we are no farther along in closing the safe. However I did carry out one LARGE garbage bag of useless paper to recycle.

I made a dent, albeit a very teeny tiny one.

Sort of similar to the paper in which people note important numbers or combinations.