Coming late in the evening from a long day's work, the last thing I want to think is mathematics, however simple it might be. "If I have two keys on my key bunch, what is the chance that I pick the wrong key?", I struggle with the dim intellect left at the odd hour of the day. Common sense tells me that I have a respectable fifty percent chance of getting right, although things never worked this way, when I have to pick my key for opening the door. As one of my Professors used to comment, common sense is not so common. So, I end up struggling with keys. Life did not appreciate much even though I added a marker on one of the keys recently, as I do not remember if the marker was for the home key or not.
In the US, and in India I used keys with multiple levers carved on them (picture to the right). More the levers, better the security of your lock. While in Switzerland, the keys are more trendy with laser engravings (picture to the left). (Do not rush to duplicate the Swiss key image, I got it from the web, it's not my key). An observation which took me a while is that in the US, no one can get locked inside a house. This is probably a feature with that owes its origin to the way the US judicial system works, which under appropriate conditions endows any individual, even a thief, the right to sue the landlord for security reasons. On the other hand, in Switzerland, the door is closed from inside with the key, which means one can get locked inside the apartment as well. I still remember the first night of my stay in Switzerland. By mistake, I was given the key to a room that was already occupied by someone. And the reception was closed before I realized this! The gentleman occupying the room with was kind enough to offer some space in his room, but I had to hold on to my key all night just for my own security in the new country. And in India, where most doors still use the latch system with a pad-lock on it, the door can be locked from both the sides. That's right, if someone locks you inside a room, you could express your protest by locking yourself from the inside. I really do not know if it helps, but sometimes it soothes the ego.
Although the mechanism of their functioning is slightly different, the fact still remains that keys are a menace. One trouble, as I mentioned is the recognition of the right key. The other problem, which is even worse is that people tend to forget their keys. Some smart people have devised their own strategies to deal with this: some have the key bunch in a tight-band around the neck, making others wonder if they were on a leash; some others have their key bunch tagged to a heavy metal safety-pin, which almost looks like a weapon. And these days, with heightened security one may not go past the parking area of the airports with this huge weapon. One of my friends came up with a clever solution, which is to hook his key bunch to the pants. His logic is that he is less likely to forget his pants than his keys. It worked at least for as long as I shared office space with him, and I am really really happy about it.
With so much troubles attached to it, sometimes I wish I could open the door by just uttering, `open sesame`. For the rent I pay for my apartment, I frankly do not think finger printing combined a retinal scan is an economically viable solution for opening the doors!!
