This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Do you believe in signs or omens? I do sometimes, especially if they're ominous. The first one I ever noticed occurred in the closing days of 1971.

While washing cars at Streator Chevrolet, I watched an animal control officer hoist a stray dog into his truck. From across Main Street, the hapless dog's eyes locked on mine. A silent plea for understanding passed between us.

I knew the dog didn't want to go to the pound, but it seemed there was something more he was trying to communicate to me. Something important.

Back then I couldn't read even the simplest of minds, including my own. So I had no idea what the dog was trying to convey. More than a month later I found out. I was standing in almost the same spot when I heard my military draft number announced over the radio.

Suddenly, the entire dog episode made sense, including his message. "Run if you want, but the forces of darkness will eventually find you." The dog was right. They did.

I told you that to tell you this: There's a good chance you may have received an omen lately. The end (or beginning of a year) is a busy time for portents of what is to come in our lives. I don't know why that is, but it just seems to be so.

I offer as proof what happened to me Thursday, Dec. 31, 2015 — the last day of the year. I got locked inside my house. That's right. Inside.

Getting locked out of the house is no big deal. It's happed to me at least a dozen times. Hell, it happens to any guy in a relationship with a woman. Do something they don't like, you end up sleeping in the car or the backyard.

On Thursday, I got up and tried to go outside for the newspaper. The front door wouldn't unlock. I beat on it without any luck. The mechanism was frozen solid.

I went to the back door and found the porch there neck-deep in snow that I'd been meaning to shovel off for a week. The outdoor thermometer said 9 degrees.

In the end, I raised the groaning garage door just enough to drag myself under it. I went to the front porch and began using a hairdryer to defrost the door knob.

It struck me then that this was another omen. I mean, how often does a person get locked inside their own house? This was so unusual that it had to mean something. But what?

2015 hadn't been a completely strange year. No surgery. I still had a job. Sonny hadn't gotten me hurt again. All of our cannons were still functional. None of my grandkids was in pain or trouble.

The omen had to mean something for the coming year. My first thought was a foretelling of a coming incarceration. After all, it isn't that much of a jump from "locked inside" something to "jail."

That wouldn't be so bad. I could easily do my job from jail. In fact, the material I got there would be better than the stuff I get from just being in Utah.

A lot of possibilities went through my mind as I defrosted — divorce, death, illness, bankruptcy, dropping my parents off at a rest home, etc. If I could figure out what this sign meant, perhaps I could head it off.

Then I got it. There I was on my porch wielding a hair dryer on a door knob. Unshaven, serious bed head, and clad only in snow boots and some raggedy Scooby-Doo pajamas, I was cussing at the top of my lungs.

Since all of this was in full view of the neighbors, I figured that I was just an omen for someone else's coming year.

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.