It might sound obvious but feelings are things you only feel if you feel them.
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Which is handy when you're a psychopath, or having feelings you don't necessarily want to have.
Like when you're locker at work has all your work clothes in it, but for some reason, the locker ain't unlocking.
That's a bad feeling because it means you can't change out of your cycling clothes that you've ridden to work in, and into your work clothes, that are locked in the locker.
Normally you press those buttons and the locker goes bzzzzt, and you're in.
This day it goes phzzzt and dies, and after pressing the buttons willy nilly in exasperation you realise you may well have changed the locker combo entirely to one you'll have no way of ever knowing.
Meaning that locker ain't gonna unlock, ever, or until you can sweet talk the building manager into having a look.
That's going to take time, and possibly expose you to accusations of human error.
In the meantime you'll be wearing your cycling clothes at work all day (actually, I phoned homed and received a mercy drop at midday)
That still left the locker locked with all my goodies inside which in turn generated more of those feelings I wished I was wasn't feeling.
Because they weren't constructive feelings in terms of dealing with the building manager - quite possibly the only guy in the southern hemisphere able to get that locker unlocked. And it wasn't his fault the locker wasn't unlocked.
It might have something to do with human error, he suggested. Like someone punching in the wrong combination a couple of times and then sending the locker mechanism into lockdown. Hard to say, he said, although that seemed to slide out of his mouth pretty easy.
Could be a malfunction too, I offered with little or no confidence.
Now you'd think there'd be a master combination that could fix things up straight away, but it's never as straightforward as that when you're standing there in lycra.
And to be fair, the building manager has to be careful too when it comes to security and besides, it's kind of funny if it's happening to someone else.
You don't want to go on like a good sort because the building manager may triage your issue to the "I'll get round to it later" category, which is a situation that can generate more of those feelings you don't want to feel.
Thankfully the building manager guy was a good bloke and it only took him a day and a half to track down the solution.
Turns out the battery in the lock mechanism was flat and there was a little protocol he could follow to unlock my clothes. Failing that, head office advised him to use a crow bar. The old universal locker opener.
Thankfully the protocol worked, and that feeling I'd been trying not to feel was no longer felt, replaced instead by the feeling of gratitude to the building manager.
And eternal suspicion of electronic combination locks.
