Adventures in "Aww, @#$%!"

Here’s how I managed to lock myself out of the car this morning. It was comedy, all the way through.

The parking garage of the place where I work quite naturally requires a parking card before you can enter. As I rounded a turn half a block from said garage, said parking card flipped itself out of the place where it rests. Flipped itself rather beautifully, actually: I caught its flight out of the corner of my eye, and a gymnast would have been proud of the precision of its tumbling routine.

It stuck the landing, too: totally out of sight under the passenger seat.

Fortunately, before you actually reach the garage entrance, the building has a little freight/delivery area where I was able to pull off, out of the way. No problem. I got out, went around to the passenger side, the door was still locked. Duh. I went back around to the driver side, opened the door, hit the Lock/Unlock button, closed the driver-side door, and went back around to the passenger door.

Naturally, and it need hardly be said because otherwise there’s no story: I hit the Lock/Unlock button the wrong way. Then closed the door.

Passenger door: still locked. “Ho ho ho,” I said to myself, and trundled around to the driver’s door again. Which was now quite thoroughly locked.

I was no longer saying anything resembling “Ho ho ho.”

Oh, and my business partner was making my cellphone tintinnabulate repeatedly.

Two items of good fortune: it’s a lovely early-spring day here in Los Angeles, and I am a tall person with unusually long arms. Which means that both windows were slightly open, and my long arms and long bassist’s fingers were barely long enough to barely reach the Lock/Unlock button on the passenger-but-not-the-driver side.

Pop goes the door, card retrieved, business partner’s problems dealt with, everything back to normal. Arms red and stinging, scrapes washed and cleaned.

But really. I mean, really. Come on, world, leave me alone, wouldja?

By the way, in the movie version of this (because that’s how my brain works), the story as it happened tells itself pretty well—except that there must not be a convenient freight/delivery area. The poor hapless schmuck locking himself out of the car must be blocking the entrance to the garage, with cars piling up behind and honking, people yelling, the whole thing. Because one of the primary rules of storytelling is always this: whatever the situation is, make it as bad as possible. A cop approaching on horseback, demanding the guy move his damn car. Some burly guy getting out of a truck about to beat the guy up. That sort of thing.

Some days, the world, it just says to you, “Nah. Go home. Trust me on this one.”

Did I mention I have a dentist’s appointment for this afternoon? That should finish things off nicely, don’t you think?