Most students use a locker in Irvington’s crowded hallways. Which begs the question: why get a locker in the first place? No one forced you to sign a locker form. And yet, on Maze Day, dozens of students scramble around the school to claim the locker with the most optimal location and physical characteristics. But the most annoying parts of lockers aren’t their broken shelves or rusty walls, it’s what’s on the outside.

First of all, the locks. Those things are like those mood rings that used to be popular in 2010. Both are mass produced. Both are shiny. Both are low-quality and both are indicators of everyone’s current emotions. If your lock opens on the first try, great: you will be in a good mood for the next two weeks. In fact, you feel so great that you could walk 10,000 miles to Yale and get accepted because gosh darnit you defeated your locker! If your locker doesn’t open after your 32nd try, you’re probably so annoyed you could punch through the locker instead, and you’ll be in an awful mood for the next 800 days. Even horoscopes are more predictable than these locks.

Now the only solution is to buy a new lock, right? Wrong. They’re still the same, except it looks less depressing because it’s not school-issued. Your day won’t change because of your lock. Nobody really cares about how shiny your new lock is. In reality, your lock won’t make a difference. Instead, I’ve provided several alternatives to opening your locker.

1. Destroy it with your backpack, which is heavy enough to break metal on its own
2. Pour cafeteria milk onto any locker surface, which will degrade instantly due to the milk’s acidic nature (it’s so acidic, it’s a three on the pH scale).
3. Destroy it with that couple that makes out by your locker. Make them useful for once.
4. Or, go to the Campus Supervisors’s for help but turn back because you’d rather attain the sweet, sweet reward of your locker contents through manual labor

Will these solutions work? Absolutely. Well, you’re more likely to open your locker this way than fumbling with your lock for a few days. And if you’re worried about people stealing your “valuables” from the giant gaping hole you’ve created in your locker, don’t worry. Everyone has airpods. You’re too broke for them. They don’t need to steal your stuff! So have fun, everybody! Go forth and destroy lockers!