#setuptofail

Seeing how my surprise birthday plans for my father were a burst, I decided to try again. In our basement my father has his own mini lab. so I decided to go down to setup some small decorations to make it feel less like a cold research facility but more of a home office.

Lets just say my plans with good intentions are starting to just become plans for failure. Let me walk you through what has to be the worst surprise party ever. First of all, the door to the basement was locked. So, I needed to find the key. Sounds simple enough, but I wasted more than half my time searching the whole house. With no luck I ended up resorting to Youtube videos on how to pick locks. They make it seem so easy, and yet all I ended up doing was damaging the door. Long story short, I used the kitchen knife to carve a hole along the knobs ring and the door, than used the knife to flick the switch to open it.

Yeah, it was overly excessive and I was going to get in trouble for the damage, but once he saw the decorations I was positive he was going to let it slide. Once I got to the bottom of the stairs there was another door to the actual lab and another damned lock. I have never seen something like it. It looked like some sort of lock you'd see in a video game. It had moving parts and again what looked like a key slot, or some hole in the middle. I had no idea how that worked and I couldn't find anything online that looked like it.

So I went and searched for something that would fit the slot. I remembered one of the videos used a pen, so I got a pen and used the tube inside with the ink to poke the hole. When I pressed into it I could hear a click, but nothing would happen. I tried to slide the moving parts into different positions, but again nothing would happen. I wasted so much time getting to the basement only to waste even more time with this stupid lock that my father was about to be home.

So I figured if I couldn't get into the lab I could at least decorate the door.

Just as I was finishing up, I heard the front door close. Soon after, I could hear running. My father was at the top of the stairs, furious. I tried to explain what I was doing and I apologized about the door, but he wouldn't hear me out. He just went on and on about how there was a reason for the locks and that it was dangerous inside his lab. That it was no place for me to be and how it need to remain sterile due to his research. Blah blah blah.

He gave me so many reasons that I won't bother to list them all out. In short each one was just an example of why I wasn't allowed down there. I've never seen my father yell before. Even when I was younger and had gotten into trouble, not once did he get this upset.

I'm starting to think no matter what I do, everything I try just goes to shit. I don't know how my sister did it. I don't know how I can measure up to her. Even now, all I'm managing to do is fuck things up.