My daughter should get a job with the FBI.

We have a large wooden desk that I used for years, then bequeathed to my wife. It has a wide, shallow center drawer, as well as drawers on the right and the left. Here’s the problem:

When the center drawer is closed, an internal mechanism locks the side drawers. When the center drawer is opened, even two inches, the side drawers are unlocked. Recently, the top left drawer remained locked, and try as we might, we couldn’t get into it.

As I learned in my recent problem with a freezer door that kept popping open and not shutting, the Internet is the place to go. Someone somewhere will have had a similar problem and will proudly show how they solved it. I immediately did an extensive search for ‘left-hand desk drawer won’t unlock’, ‘wooden desk drawer locking mechanism stuck’, ‘old desk won’t unlock side drawer’, and every other combination I could think of.

I found a vast number of videos on how to pick a lock, how to use soap to lubricate the sides of a drawer, how to contact a locksmith, and other off-point instructions. Nowhere could I find a diagram or video of how the locking mechanism works on a desk such as ours.

I told you that so I could tell you this:

My daughter said, “Why not get a spy camera—the sort the FBI uses in movies to peak under doors or through small holes in a wall? We could drill a little hole in the desk, feed the camera in, and see what the problem is.”

She was talking about an endoscope, which is used for surgery and for poking about inside the human body.

“Cameras like that are probably really expensive,” I said. “I’m of the mind to drill a large hole in the side of the desk, reach in, and unhook whatever needs to be unhooked.”

My wife, however, didn’t want a fist-sized hole drilled in her desk.

A few minutes later, my daughter showed me a picture of an endoscope that cost $25. The description said it was useful for “hard-to-reach, narrow, and confined places at home or outdoors, such as HVAC, vent pipes, engines, air conditioners, sofa corners, bathtub pipes, toilets, etc.”

“Let’s order it,” my wife said.

A few days later, it arrived, and my daughter plugged one end of it into her phone.
I watched her drill a small—not fist-sized—hole in the underside of the desk, near the back. She inserted the camera and fed it in. The camera has a built-in light, so it was easy to see the dark recesses of the desk’s innards. Watching her phone as she maneuvered the camera, she soon found the locking mechanism. She got a metal coat hanger (we keep a few on hand for just such tasks), fed it into the hole, and in 15 minutes of trial and error, bingo.

Dear FBI (real or Hollywood), my daughter’s contact information is available upon request.

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