My van has been causing me some stress lately (I'm working on that blog piece for later) so to ease my troubles Tom switched cars with me. I'm now driving what I call the Fred Flintstone vehicle because it is much lower, and I stress much lower, to the ground than my van. But the Buick LeSabre runs and doesn't cause me much stress.
We only have a one car garage so the van is housed in there at night and the Buick sits outside. Every night I harp on Tom to lock the car. He thinks I'm ridiculous about worrying about this saying if someone wanted into the car it didn't matter if it were locked or not. It reminds me a lot of my father who use to leave his keys in the ignition or the trunk or in the door lock and he would say, "Someone might want to go for a ride." Yeah. This week as I headed out to the car in the driveway in the morning to take Darcy to school it hit me that I didn't remember locking the car when I parked it the day before. Wanting to check, I didn't hit the unlock on the key fob, but tried the door and found that I had indeed not locked the car. Shame, shame, I scolded myself.
I took Darcy to school, windows rolled down enjoying our cooler, no humidity cold front. When I returned and parked the car I shut off the engine and rolled my fat body out of the door, hitting the lock as I did so. But then I realized that the window was half open and since it is a power window I would have to get back in and turn on the ignition to close it. Decisions, decisions. This is what went through my brain (which will explain why I'm crazy most of the time):
My thoughts: "I should probably roll up the window if I'm going to lock the door because what is the point of having the car locked with the window rolled down? I mean, would an intruder see the window rolled down and be more drawn to the car then if the window were rolled up? Is he more likely to come over and check the door? Will an intruder even be in this neighborhood where all the neighbors are home during the day? Will a solicitor leaving crap on my door turn into an intruder when he notices the half open window and unlocked door? Would he open the door? Would he lean in and grab....what would he grab? There is nothing even in this car to grab except my kleenex box. But he might hit the garage door opener and get into the house, but then Elliot would bark and we would hear the garage go up and that would give me enough time to get Sid who would come over with one of his umpteen guns and shoot the intruder. Then that would certainly be a mess, not to mention the trauma of it all. But really, who is going to go through all of that trouble? And wouldn't a locked door stymie him just a bit more so than if I left the door unlocked? Yeah. A half opened window would lure him, but the locked door will cause him just a bit of quickness and maybe stop him from trying to unlock it in the first place. Okay, I'll leave it alone because it is too much trouble to get back in the damn car and get the window rolled up."
And I left the window down and the car locked and went into the house. A few hours later I came out to go and pick up Madison from school. I had some stuff cradled in my arms and I was trying to find the correct fob to unlock the door. My key chain is full of keys from different houses of relatives and friends and neighbors and two key fobs in case I would need to jump into the van. I always end up punching the wrong fob because I'm so use to the feel of the van key fob. Naturally I punched the wrong one over and over. I was standing at the car at this point, annoyed because I couldn't see down past the stuff in my arms to see my keys clearly. I kept feeling around trying to locate the fob and each time I ended up with the van fob instead of the Buick. I was muttering to myself and noticed that my neighbor across the street had some guys working on painting and fixing up some stuff around her house. One of the guys was standing in the shade of her oak tree watching me.
My thoughts: "See that guy probably noticed the window was down and was thinking of coming over and checking out the car. Who are those guys? Where did she find these guys? She usually uses Don for fixing things. Are these guys that Don sent over because I trust Don, not that he ever came and finished up my tile job, but I trust him to hire decent guys. Well, maybe the guy didn't see me come out of the house and maybe he thinks I'm robbing the car. Maybe he is not working and staring at me because he isn't sure who I really am. Well that's nice of him. Maybe he notices that I'm having trouble finding the right key. Oh, lord, I hope he doesn't come over to help me. Great, now these guys will know I'm gone from my house. They will probably want to break in knowing I'm not here."
About this time it entered my head that the window was half open and I that could reach my hand in and unlock the car door. Ah Ha! I reached in and pushed where I thought he button was located. No button. I had to move closer to the car and scramble around with my hand as I searched for the lock. I found it, hit it and then I pulled out my hand and lifted the car door handle. Nothing. I'd hit the wrong button and locked the car again. I reached in again and felt around and around for the button, touched it, felt for the up and down button, thought some about whichwas which, hit the up unlocking the door. Ah, success! I took out my hand and lifted the car door handle and the car opened. It also set off the security alarm, something I do not have in my van, and it was the loudest sound I had ever heard. It didn't register at first in my brain that this alarm belonged to the car that I was breaking into, and I lifted my head to search my neighborhood for the source of the alarm. My eyes locked with the guy across the street watching me and it hit me in that moment that the alarm was coming from Tom's car.
Me: "God Dammit!"
The alarm just kept beeping and beeping, much like a horn sounding the approach of a tornado. I threw the stuff in my arms in the car and fumbled for the key fob, knowing from my friend's car that I needed to hit the red button on the fob, which I did turning off the honking. I took a deep breath, my ears ringing, climbed into the car, shut the door, started the car and slowly backed out of the driveway acting like I belonged in this neighborhood, in this house, and in this car as I drove away past the worker still staring at me.
My thoughts: "Great, what if he calls the cops. Won't that take some explaining to do. And won't Tom just enjoy that in the whole switching of the cars since the van is working like a charm for him. How was I suppose to know their was an alarm on this car? And good lord, but that thing is loud. I guess I got my answer on whether or not it would slow down an intruder. I'm just lucky I went to the bathroom before this whole episode because that noise would have made me pee my pants. And who thought of putting that kind of noise in a car in the first place? And really, did anybody even come outside to see what was happening? Suppose my car was really being stolen? I hope that guy does call the cops because at least that will mean someone cared, but he won't because surely he saw me struggling with stuff and knows I live there. Well, this is sure a funny story. Hey! It will give me something to blog about. Awesome!"
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