Locks and Keys

Locks and Keys ©

By Michael Casey

I was wondering what to talk about tonight, I’d been busy watching Stranger Things on tv with my daughter, so I’d been enjoying that as we watched  our cat Totoro stretched out on the sofa. I mention Totoro as in Stranger Things the cat as eaten by a monster, so keep a tight hold of your cat if you watch the show. I’ve just  helped out with a bit of homework too and now I’ve sat down and its 9.40pm as  I look up at the clock, I just decided to talk about locks and keys as I looked around the room and was wondering what to talk about, and I looked at the door. So that’s how logically illogical I am in my choice of talk material.

In Stranger Things tonight there was a couple who hid their feeling from each other, it was only when they were talking to an investigative journalist that the allowed the barriers to fall down. Russian Vodka did part too. Tonight in the news we hear about a mother who is under lock and key in Iran. All I ask and pray is that she can come home with her baby to her family here in England. But I doubt if I have any readers in Iran, but I do know God is Good, so I’ll leave it to him.

I’ve just reminded myself of a piece in the Bible when Saint Paul was in jail and the Angles came and walked him out of his jail, and he walked past all the Roman guards till he was in the street and free. In the background behind me I can hear Where is the Love by the Black Eyed Peas, when we are locked up we all wonder where is the love, we feel we are all alone. Love has lost us, or rather our heart is locked, our heart is frozen. Love unlocks our hearts and minds. Example opens our minds and our hearts, example is the greatest Key of all. It’s been my dad’s birthday this weekend, and I’ve been thinking about him, he’d be 96 if he were still alive. I try and have as big a heart as his. He is the standard.

In actual fact he made me lock up our house every night including the entry gate we had, my brother used to call it the ceremony of the keys. So I supposed my ardour for locking up stems back to that over 45 years ago maybe. Keys jangle and clatter and bolts and bars slide into position. When I was 19 I had the keys to a building in Birmingham City Centre, if you know Superfi on Smallbrook Queensway I used to work above it in the office. We even had a remote control for the metal shutters on the steps of the building, we used to shoo the drunks and the night-clubbers away so we could get into work for the night shift. Then we had to go up the spiral stairs and unlock the shutters on that too, before reaching our floor and door and yet more locks, and finally the lock to the computer room door. Four locks before we got to work, foreplay would have been more fun but that’s another story.

Life is about locks too.  As we grow we learn things and unlock things in our hearts and mind. Education is another key that breaks down barriers, reminds us that we need each other and work better as a team. It should also teach us that the more we know the more we realise just how little we really know. Though some people are smartarses and really smart arses know less that nothing, except how to spread manure as donkeys do.

So teachers, and by teachers I start with mothers as they are our first teachers, they unlock our potential with love. My mother taught me to read by teaching me from the local newspaper, from the cartoons I seem to remember. I hope she is happy now that I am a writer, 1,200,000 words now. 14 books on Amazon Kindle, though it seems only Poland loves my stories, the rest of the world just like them. I have yet to find the Key from being an Undiscovered Writer to being one that is read and bought. Being  read is better than nothing, maybe when I die my daughters can have the royalties, penniless in death, rich afterwards.

The greatest thing you can be is a Key, you open minds, you open imagination. You help people realise their potential. My mother said You Are As Good As Anybody, and she is right, we all are equal. Its opportunity which helps, its keys that help. Water, Health and Education these are the keys to a good society. We may bitch in Birmingham about stuff but we have the fundamentals. If you live somewhere where you don’t have those keys, then you should change your society.

North Korea springs to mind, just Google earth and see the lack of roads in the north compared to the South. Nuclear weapons hidden in the Metro system because the West cannot reach there and they don’t care about their own people. That’s why it may just be that only a female revolution in North Korea topples the Dear Leader.

I’ve digressed but I know the best medicine comes from the nipple from all our mothers.  Mothers teach us love, they teach us right and wrong, they teach us patience, they look after the sick and broken in our families or as nurses it’s the females, the best gender which does the most caring. I suppose as its Sunday I’ve ended up with a Sermon. The Key is Love, and yes it’s very complicated, I have my own scars too. But the Key to life is love, and family and as my mum used to say the Family that Prays Together Stays together. So if I do have just one reader in Iran Please put this family back together again. Because God is Good, and my mother taught me that.