Our three youngest granddaughters all got fire engine red mini-safes a while back to assure the security of their cash and other valuable possessions small enough to fit in them.
They are solid metal and seem to be sturdy, and all of the toaster-size lockboxes came with individual combinations and keys that work only on those safes.
It should be of some concern to the girls, though, that the boxes were in the toy section and not the hardware department of the local Kaffie Fredericks Mercantile Store.
They also have little slots in the top to deposit coins like those in piggy banks. So the safes might be classified more as playthings than theft-resistant vaults.
Charlee Ann is just six and the youngest of the bunch, and safety and security must have been on her mind the day we were browsing among the tourists in the Kaffie-Fredericks toy aisles.
She first picked out a pair of handcuffs when making a selection under the one item rule that I had enacted. After I turned her down on the handcuffs, she went for the dart gun before finally going along with the other girls on the mini-safes.
The lockboxes came with several sheets of bright yellow letters that could be used to put names on the safes to verify ownership. The girls were peeling the letters off the sheets and attaching them to the safes as we drove home.
Allie and Ava put just their first name on the boxes. Charlee Ann continued to work on personalizing her safe long after the other girls had finished.
When we finally saw it, the red lockbox was completely covered with yellow lettering. In addition to her full name, she had attached the messages Do Not Touch, Keep Your Hands Off, Private Property, Paws Off and Snakes Inside.
Despite her obvious concern about the security of her lockbox, Charlee Ann announced in the car that she wanted all of us to know the combination in case she forgot it. Then she told us it was 1-3-0.
We told her that she should not share the combination with us or anyone else and that she could use her key to gain access to the safe if she forgot the code. She said she planned to lock the key in the box to keep it safe.
The last time I checked, the safes contained a few dollar bills each left over from their Christmas money, some bracelets and necklaces, felt tip pens, Chapstick, mechanical pencils, pony tail holders and Charlee’s lockbox key.
All of that reminded me of my dad’s considerable efforts to maintain the security of the little toolshed that was built in to an outside corner of our house when I was growing up.
We lived in a paper mill village of cookie-cutter frame houses that all looked about the same. The homes had a small storage area near the back door steps that my dad and all of our neighbors called the toolshed.
Our toolshed held a manual push reel lawnmower, a shovel, rake and yard broom and an old toolbox with separate sections and a heavy duty handle.
My dad could fix plumbing and electrical problems, busted water heaters, leaks in the roof and most other things that went wrong around the house.
He had hammers, pliers, screwdrivers, tape measures, crescent and pipe wrenches, levels, black electrical tape and other things in the toolbox that he didn’t want anybody to steal, borrow, misplace or even touch.
So he kept the built-in door lock and an additional padlock on the toolshed locked at all times even though he never locked the house or garage and always left the car keys in his green Plymouth.
He did everything to secure the tool shed except for putting bright yellow lettering on it warning people to keep their paws off and to beware of snakes inside.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES