There was flash flood warning tonight, and of course everyone wants to stay in and watch a movie and order a pizza when it rains. So we were busy, the other driver and I, and I didn't help matters when, after completing the first delivery in a triple, I returned to The Deathtrap to find I'd locked myself out.

Step back, take a good look at my incompetence. And that wonderfully Kafkaesque second sentence.

Either I accidentally bumped the lock down on my way out, or I reflexively locked the door as if I were back at the pizza parlor. It's my fault, yes, I know. The whole situation was embarrassing and unpleasant. But I have another point to make here.

People are jerks. Specifically: people in Southeast Brainerd, on Pine Street, on the 1300 block, are huge jerks.

So here's the deal. My car was running, with the lights on and my keys and my wallet and my cell phone inside, because I really didn't need any of those things to walk to the door and deliver a pizza. And I was standing in the rain.

I used my amazing coping skills and walked back over to the house I'd just delivered a pizza to. I knocked.

And I know they heard me. I could see them. I knocked again, louder. But I guess I'm not worth opening the door for if I don't have hot pizza with me. Isn't that right, 1315 Pine Street?

Frustrated, I walked to the next lit house. They had a walk-in porch area, so I went through the first door and knocked on the "real" door, only slightly perturbed by the "Forget the Dog: Beware of Owner" sign with the picture of a revolver pointing at me. No answer.

I tried three other houses on the block; everyone must have forgotten to turn their lights off before leaving town.

Back at The Deathtrap, I tried all the doors again, baffled that the side door was actually locked for once.

Finally, a man in a pickup pulled up to one of the houses I hadn't tried. I told him I was locked out of my car and asked if I could use his phone. He said no and walked inside.

So I gave up and ran over to a nearby laundromat to call work. The pay phones were broken, oddly enough, or they didn't like quarters from my moneybag. I was a bit wary of Southeast Brainerd after getting snubbed on Pine, but I noticed that a nonthreatening woman had been watching me from her van as the pay phone rejected me.

I explained my plight and asked if I could use her cell phone to call work. I told her it was a local call, and at that she demurred. She was from the Cities and didn't want to pay roaming charges.

I went back to the van and tried all the doors again.

Back at the laundromat, I discovered that most people who have to wash their clothes at a laundromat don't seem to have cell phones. And both pay phones were still, and inexplicably, broken.

I finally found a couple willing to let me use their phone (after some quick deliberation) and I gave them a dollar to make up for the ten cents my call probably cost. That was a spite-dollar, really, a conscious rejection of Southeast Brainerd's grudging decision to show me some goodwill. Like when the Underground Man pays the whore.

My family is up at the cabin this weekend, so Giovanni's had to call me a locksmith ($60=scam). They sent someone else out with replacement pizzas, for the two people whose food was still in my car. And I went back to the van and stood in the rain for about ten minutes, unwilling to wait in the porches of jerks.

I think I just have different expectations of what people should do for other people.

Or maybe the people of Southeast Brainerd have more reason to be apprehensive of strangers than someone from Unorganized Territory does; I've noticed that they lock their doors right after they close them.

Or perhaps the apathy and diffusion of responsibility that I associate with more urban locales has already taken root in our small town.

Probably all of the above. Well, whatever.