If you have been reading here at all you know that I currently live in Nicaragua and I used to live in the U.S. On http://www.NicaLiving.com I regularly talk about how the same answer to the same question is not all that common. I point out how to work with and/or get around the system.

I also point out how this can be frustrating for someone that came from an "it always works like this" environment. For that reason, I just thought of something I did when I was abou 17 years old in the U.S. and just had to laugh.

I had a part-time job in a technical school. They had classes during the day and classes three evenings a week. My job was to run the "stockroom" for the evening classes. This meant checking out equipment to students and handling request forms for some electronics parts. In the stockroom there were quite a few things of value.

I was issued a key to the stockroom. This had to happen as I was the only person working there for the night classes. The key has stamped into it Do Not Duplicate. Now, I certainly had no reason to want to duplicate it—if I had wanted to steal anything I certainly didn't need a second key. But, being the inquisitive kid I was (is rebel a better word?) I just wondered how secure this label was.

After a lot of thought I decided I wanted to perform a test. So, I wrapped masking tape around the top of the key, wrote "garage" on it and had a copy made.