My Stupid Car Alarm
One morning the other day, I gathered all my gear for work: giant purse, laptop bag, workout bag, lunch bag, breakfast smoothie and schlepped it all out to the car at once because, no, I will not make two trips, and no, I cannot afford a Sherpa. Because, when I tell the dogs goodbye every morning with cookie treats and vociferous snoot-boops and scritches and promises that Jesus will take care of them while I’m gone because Our Lord and Savior loves little doggies (What? He DOES), going back in, all, “My bad, dogs, that was just a test-run” only upsets “everyone.”
So loaded down, I hit the garage door opener with an elbow, open the car door with a pinky, toe up the trunk release and stow as much as I could. Already late, I plop into the driver’s seat, set my smoothie in the console, close the car door, put on my seat belt and begin my morning rummage for my car keys in the purse. Because I am overwhelmingly tired due to the number of times Daisy has gotten me up in the middle of the night lately -- I swear, she's as bad as a newborn -- I fumble my keys and drop them into that DAMNED slot between the car seat and the console where no one with hands larger than a 3-year-old can retrieve.
What I need.
After a couple minutes of groping with my MAN HANDS, the keys are still wedged tight. Rather than do the expedient thing and unbuckle my seat belt, open the car door, slide the seat back and really get after the keys, I was sure I could get them if I just…reached…a little…further…
The car doors suddenly lock.
The car alarm sounds. DEAFENINGLY. STRIDENTLY throughout the early morning neighborhood. The trumpets announcing Jesus’ return are not going to be as ear-splitting as my car alarm is.
So naturally, panic ensues. I grab the door handle and try to exit my motor vehicle. The doors won’t work. The windows don’t work. MACHINE HAS TURNED AGAINST (WO)MAN. I’m bouncing around the cab of my car trying to find a frickin’ exit from this insanity. (The visual here is an enraged cat trying to escape a burlap bag.)
I ram the seat back to its furthest setting and wriggle down under the dash to try to go under the seat and reach the keys that way. I’m not a petite woman, so it was a tight fit. Beyond panic, I’ve now lost my humanity and turned into a mindless animal, scrabbling for metal. Anyone who has ever been in an enclosed space with an alarm sounding directly in one’s ear – not unlike a Marine drill sergeant screaming at a raw recruit – knows the panic that one feels at the sheer noise.
I find the key. I ram it into the ignition. Silence.
Ears ringing, I unlock the doors, throw the car door open and spill out on to the garage floor, sputtering, sweating and cursing. There’s a schoolchild at the end of the driveway – frozen in apparent shock – on his bike, eyes wide, mouth agape, riding helmet askew. I freeze.
“Uh, hello,” I say.
He speeds away on his bike, skinny legs pumping, equipped with a newly-expanded vocabulary, I assume. I cringe. I can hear the dogs barking in the house. The porch light on the house across the street goes on.
I turn on the car, and the low-tire indicator goes off. THOROUGHLY FED UP, I drive to the C-store, get $3 in quarters because even though it’s only $1.50 for 4 minutes of air, it will take me 8 minutes to figure out what is going on with my tire pressure. IN MY WHITE PANTS.
I fire up the air. The hose is too short to get around my car to the tire in question, so I move the car to a better position, eating into my 8 minutes. One of the little valve stem caps rolls away. Too late, as I’m crawling under my front tire to reach it IN MY WHITE PANTS, I realize I’m waving my ass in the air to all the construction laborers fueling up their white Lester the Molester vans. I don’t even care that I’m next to a school zone at this point. FML.
