"Time is on my side. Yes, it is."

I had mowed the grass on Friday, and was naturally looking forward to a quiet weekend, so naturally the phone rang early Saturday.

It was one of my wife's dozen or so "best friends" and she had a problem.

It seems she had lost the key to the padlock on the wooden gate to her back yard and the groundskeepers who keep her suburban estate looking like a "Southern Living" photo shoot would not be able to gain access.

She wondered if my wife would ask if I had something in my collection of manly tools that would solve the problem.

"I think she means bolt-cutters," I later told my wife when the dilemma was explained. "And no, I don't. 

"The only people I know who have bolt cutters are burglars and middle school assistant principals."

"How much do they cost?" my wife asked. "We could buy some, then keep them around for when we need them.'

(Translation?"I know we've never needed bolt cutters over several decades of marriage, but I would appreciate it if you would solve my friend's problem.") 

"Sure," I said, demonstrating my experience with matrimony hadn't gone to waste.

I set off on my mission indirectly, hoping the friend's missing key would be found as I dawdled while pretending due diligence.

I actually drove over to look at the lock and make sure it wasn't some super industrial model that would require super industrial action. It wasn't. Just a simple, medium-sized Master lock. 

I considered an immediate solution of just unscrewing the large bolts that held the lock mechanism into the wood of the gate, but then you couldn't secure the gate and it would look kind of tacky.

So, I went to the stores. The first one had some small, modestly priced bolt cutters, but not what I thought the job might require. Better to buy big, I figured, and get it over with.

The second store had what I needed.

This might be the place where I confess that I have never used a pair of bolt cutters to snap a padlock.

I have seen it done. Perhaps the last time was in high school when the lock was removed from the locker of some marginal teammate who quit showing up, and the equipment manager wanted the helmet back.

I guessed I'd find out.

Soon I was standing at the gate where I spread the handles of my new tool as wide as I could, fitted its cutting blades on the loop of metal, then slowly squeezed.

They sliced through the padlock's shackle like butter.

My first reaction was surprising joy, followed almost immediately with, "I bet burglars know this."

I was thanked graciously by the gate owner, who was even more impressed when I provided a new replacement padlock with two (Count them) keys.

By the time I got home, she was still on the phone, thanking my wife for our kindness.

"You're the hero," my wife said after hanging up.

"No," I said. "I'm just your husband."

I mark 30 years on the job this Friday.

Bill Kirby has reported, photographed and commented on life in Augusta and Georgia for 45 years.