The Remote Car Starter

My parents (Robbie's parents) are awesome at Christmas. My mom goes all out and has since I was a little boy. She always set up games for me to play that made Christmas VERY memorable. Last Christmas was Password, the year before that was Wheel of Fortune, and the year before that was Punch-A-Bunch. This year, I got some great stuff, but what I want to focus on in this post was something that Rebecca got from them: a Remote Car Starter.

I know that the cold in Alabama is nothing like Siberia, but when you are used to 95 degrees, 15 degrees is REALLY cold. This winter has been especially cold for us in the South and so we were both really excited about the Remote Car Starter. It was a way for us to warm up Rebecca's car (for Taylor) without having to go outside 10 minutes before we were ready to leave.

I procrastinated for a while before getting the starter installed, but we finally got it installed on Friday, January 15. That night, we were over at Bobby and Kim's house (Rebecca's parents) seeing her brother, sister-in-law, and nephews before they went back home to Tampa, FL. The temperature that night was 26 degrees and so I did the remote car start thing and it worked awesomely. I was able to start up the car from the dining room window without even putting my jacket on. That's #1!

About 10 minutes later, Rebecca and I go out to our cars to leave. She puts Taylor in the car, goes around to the front passenger side to put her bags in seat, closes the door, and goes back to the back passenger seat for one more final check on Taylor before heading out. One problem ... the door is locked. In fact, all the doors are locked.

Rebecca immediately panics. She tells me that Taylor is locked in the car and frantically asks if there is a brick close by. Becca started crying. She decided she would just break her window to get to Taylor. I told her we could not do that and that I would call a locksmith. Rebecca was inconsolable. I asked her brother to take her inside while I sorted out the situation. We called her uncle Danny who used to be a car salesmen (and subsequently a car repo guy). He recommended we call the police. The police said they had no car unlocking equipment and recommended we call the Locksmith. That was a wasted three minutes.

The car was scorching at this point because the heat was all the way up and the air was blowing full blast. I called the Locksmith. He said he would be right there. Rebecca came back outside just as two cops rolled into the driveway. Our town is slightly more hardened than Mayberry and Police Officers routinely get cats out of trees and help get babies out of locked cars.

They stood there telling Rebecca things like, "I locked my kids in the car once. Everybody does it accidentally. Don't worry about it." That DID NOT help. Where is the locksmith? Rebecca thinks the baby is crying due to the heat. The cop shines his light in the window and she is sound asleep. The locksmith still wasn't here. Come on . . .

Finally, he arrived and took what appeared to be a plastic knife with a rubber band attached to the end out of his car. He got the lock to pop in less than 3 minutes and Rebecca consoled our comfortably sleeping baby.

Don't ask Rebecca about it. She will launch into a 10 minute dissertation about how the car locks as soon as you put your keys into the ignition whereas before it only locked when the car got up to 20 mph.  For the record, she is correct.  The remote car starter does suddenly make it lock when you put the keys in the ignition. 

Hopefully this will be something we can look back at one day and laugh at.  Rebecca is not there yet.