I've had a lot of cars through the years, even considering that I didn't get my driver's license until I was 21 (in the late-1960s). Thinking back on the lot of them, I'm not sure I even remember them all. I do remember, however, that only two of them were brand new when I bought them. Back in those days, vehicles were actually affordable, and money went further. (My first buggy was a beige Volkswagen bug. Monthly payment: $50.) The early ones didn't have seat belts, then seat belts came along. The early ones didn't have electric windows, then electric windows came along. In fact, many things that once were optional, such as air conditioning, now come as standard. Another of those features is the car alarm. If ANY of my vehicles had a car alarm, I didn't know it. I never once had one go off.
There have been a few family chuckles over car alarms. When my granddaughter was a relatively new driver and had custody of the family minivan for an evening, her mother got a phone call: " Mom? beep...beep...beep...how do you beep...beep...beep...turn off beep...beep...beep... the car alarm?"
Another time, I was visiting my family when they lived in Lake County, IL, north of Chicago. We had all been on some adventure and decided to stop at a mega-store just over the border into Wisconsin that had cheeses and other lovelies. There was something the family wanted that would come from that place. I decided to stay in the car and wait. Since it was after dark, my daughter locked me in and took the keys with her. At one point, I decided to step out of the car, and that's when the beep...beep...beep started, and I had no means nor any clue how to stop it. I was attracting attention in the parking lot!!! I started frantically texting my daughter for help. I mean, it was a big store. I didn't even know where she was in that store or how long it would take for her to rescue me from the alarm. Finally, she made her way to the store front and pushed the magic button on the key fob to stop the beeping. Whew! The silence was beautiful. Never did that again!
I've had my current vehicle for, I'm guessing, seven years or so. It's a 2007 Saturn VUE SUV. I got the silly thing because my previous car was aging, and so was I. I wanted something that would take me to the end of my driving days. When I was visiting my sister and then-bro-in-law in Illinois, Shari and I went to their favorite car dealership to look over whatever used buggies they had in their lot. We talked to Joe, their salesman of choice, because Shari felt that he would really try to steer me right. Why? They had purchased a number of Corvettes and at least one loaded Tahoe from Joe. He wouldn't dare blast me with a lemon! Long story short, I purchased the Saturn at over $2k more than I wanted to spend. Why? The silly thing only had 52,000 miles on it. (All these years later, it still has less than 73,000 miles on the odometer, and yet it is 14 years old!)
So...the other day, I needed to get something out of my car. I have three keys for it. Two have fobs. One with fob, I use every day. The second one with fob stays buried in my purse as a spare. The third key with no fob hangs on the back of my front door as an emergency spare. As luck would have it, I couldn't find my primary key, so I took the easy way out and took the non-fobbed key on the back of the door. It got me in the car just fine, but then the car alarm started beeping. Whaaaat?? I waddled back to the house as fast as I could and started rifling through my purse to find the other fobbed key. At that moment, Good Neighbor Fred came roaring in the house. "Are you okay???" All the while, the car alarm is beeping. Fred had been eating his supper with his wife across the street but heard the alarm and somehow thought it meant I'd had a heart attack or something. (Never thought of setting off the car alarm as a signal for help. Hmmmm...) I finally found the second fobbed key, the horn button was pressed, and precious silence prevailed. I apologized to Fred, and he went home to finish his dinner. Of course, I felt like an idiot.
The original key-with-fob turned out to be in my jacket pocket. This is what comes of not putting things were they belong. Guilty! Have I learned anything from this? Maybe!
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