Breaking and Entering, or Being Too Clever For Your Own Good

I hate boredom. Problematic, this, because I get bored quite easily, and therefore have to keep myself entertained with all manner of pursuits. When I was little, I'd go run around in the woods, which weren't really woods, mind you, but whatever environment/game/mission/story my mind had woven for me in that particular 5-minutes of my attention span. I grew older and it became reading, at which point Stephen King entered my life, and things took a turn for the worse. For awhile there it was Dungeons & Dragons (tm) which is a delightful, if socially odious, pursuit.
And, for a short period of time, the fine art of lock-picking was my pursuit.
For the various government agencies out there: I am not a thief, cutpurse, cat-burglar, con-man, international jewel thief, or [insert movie stereotype here].
I never stole from a person's house or broke into anything sensitive, valuable, or even all that risqué. Locks were just another kind of puzzle. More than that, lock-picking requires a certain bit of mental gymnastics. You must look at a thing and see all the little ways around it, all of the ways it can be exploited, manipulated, or twisted from it's native purpose to your own. It's the ultimate expression of a puzzle, really, because the lock ceases to be a puzzle, the picks your tools, and the door your environment. When done right, at least to my way of thinking, the enigma is in the mind.
You become the puzzle.
It's a damned useful hobby, especially since I have a tendency to lock myself out of things. Houses, cars, lockers, etc, I've accidentally denied myself entry to any number of needful places and access to needful things. Windows and locks and doors and combinations may present an obstacle, but with enough time they open up to an inquisitive mind.
Of course, various agencies concerned with the enforcement of law and protection of the people object to this kind of inquisitiveness. They assume (and rightly so) that if you are breaking into a thing, obviating the things locks or barriers, that you are somehow acting illicitly. Pesky things, laws. I say again, for the sake of clarity, that I do not use these talents for such illicit purposes (that way lies the Dark Side) but the distinction is lost upon many, if not all, cops. So on those occasions when my skills are practiced in the absence of appropriate sneakiness (a far more difficult skill to learn) I have attracted undue attention.
So tonight, I sit in my friend's house (she is graciously letting me stay here for the moment) and wait for the all too likely visit from a very nice woman or man in a dark blue suit, who will ask me with a very pointed hand on her/his gun what precisely I was doing crawling through that window and if I would please come along and answer some questions.
Too bloody clever for my own good.