knobs off

Moving to a new country is such a mixture of the surprisingly familiar and the unexpectedly strange. No one uses online grocery shopping! The bathroom doors don't lock! When I asked the property manager of our rented house if we might have some little hook-and-eye catches on the doors to our smallest rooms, for modesty's sake when we have visitors, she queried what had happened to the locks on the doorknobs. 'Oh, there are no locks,' I assured her. She seemed surprised, but I was sure there were none. I had inspected and palpated. But when the caretaker came round several days later, he ushered me into the bathroom and closed the door behind us. No spooky music started up, so I didn't scream. 'Look,' he commanded, and twizzled the doorknob. I tried to twist it. No luck. It was locked! Still no scary music. 'Now,' he demonstrated, and proceeded to show me the simple, clever and perfectly effective locking-- and releasing--mechanism. I'd never seen it and never would have (never did) guess it was there. When I later stopped by the property manager's office with a small offering in thanks for feeding our cat, I apologized for my troublesome request. She brushed it off, laughing, and said, 'I did wonder what was wrong with you!' she chortled. What's wrong with me is that I don't belong here. I am not Canadian, not of this land with the strange locking doorknobs. I'm not English. And it's been almost 17 years since I lived in America. I don't seem to belong anywhere. Neither here nor there, nor there. Sigh.