Habits die hard, addendum

[mamajoan]

The reply from azurelunatic on my post about key paranoia reminded me that I have, or had, a similar thing about cars. It's all because of my mom's former car, which had this unfortunate habit of automatically locking all the doors. If I recall correctly, it would do this if you left the keys in the ignition and at least one door open -- but not all the time, which was the kind of freaky thing.

So picture this: you get in the car and start it up, but then a kid in the back seat needs something. Or you remember something you need from the back. Or you started the car so it could warm up while you buckle in the kid(s). In any case, you leave it running, and you get out, go to the back seat and do whatever it was that you needed to do, and then you close that back door -- not realizing that the car has taken it upon itself to lock the doors. Now you have a locked car with the engine running and two kids strapped into their car seats. AUGH!

I believe that this kind of thing actually even happened to my mom once or twice, after which she got a lot more careful about it, as you might imagine. And it made me paranoid about my own car, even though it had never done anything remotely similar -- but it was the same make and model, though a different year. So for a while there, if I were getting out but leaving the kids in the car and/or leaving the car running, I would leave the driver's door open. Or sometimes just crack the window open enough that I'd be able to reach in and unlock if it should somehow lock itself.

But once Isaac got old enough to unlock his own door even while strapped in, I relaxed a lot about that. And now he can even unbuckle himself, so I don't worry about it much at all any more. :)

Comments

[whuffle.livejournal.com]

I do something rather similar to this. When I open the car and I know I'm not going to immediately get into the driver's seat, I automatically put the keys on the roof right above the driver's door. That way, I can't forget them because the car won't lock closed or turn on without them. (When I had a shorter sedan, it also meant the keys were right at eye level when I stood facing the door. But then, when I had a shorter sedan, the antenna was also right above the driver's door so I used to just stick the keyring down the antenna so it couldn't go anywhere!) This means I can futz around getting Hootie into his seat, loading or unloading cargo, etc, and NEVER have to worry about locking the keys inside.