Category: moaning and groaning

I pull into the Chevron across from the Big Target in Walnut Creek. I fish out my debit card from my purse and hop out of the car. 

The door shuts with a decisive snap. 

And then it hits me. 

"Aw, shit!" I say, reaching for the handle.  Locked. "Where are my keys!"

I have my debit card, so I start the pump on the car. 

I head into the gas station mini mart, where there is a nice Asian gal behind the counter. She lends me the phone so I can call a locksmith. But it's 5:05 and my dumb guy at my locksmith that I use all the time has closed up shop for the day. 

Another guy walks into the mini mart. Half joking I say to him, "Know how to break into a car?"

"No, why?" he asks. 

Sheepishly, I explain my problem. 

"How about Triple A?" he asks. "You could call them."

DUH. I had forgotten all about AAA in my freaking out. I have had AAA for just a couple of months, too. But of course – my card is in my purse, which is in the locked car. 

I call my dad, who has a card. He laughs at me. 

But he gives me the AAA number and the member number. 

AAA dispatches North Main Tow to my aid. "Are you in a safe place?" the lady asks while I'm still on the line. 

I look at the friendly face of the girl behind the counter, and the yuppie workers filling up their tanks as rush hour starts to hit. "Yeah," I tell her. I feel bad that I'm hogging a space in the gas station, so I buy a soda and M&Ms to tide myself over. Hey, if you're stranded with your debit card, you may as well use it, right?

I didn't have to wait long for the guy to show up in his yellow truck. 

He has several tools to try to open the door. One is a long, bendable piece of metal that after wedging open the car door a bit, he is able to stick into the car. 

"Where are your keys?" he asks as he fiddles with the lock. The lock is designed in such a way that it's not conducive to opening with his tools – not the bendy wire thing, or the slim jim. 

I actually have no idea. I thought I had left them in the ignition, but they are definitely not there. I don't see them on the seat or the floor either. "I think they're in my purse," I finally decide. It's the only place they could be – I certainly didn't have them right after I turned off the car and locked myself out, now did I? But I had been messing around in my purse when I got my debit card out of my wallet, so that was where it had to be.

The guy messes around with the car for some time before giving up. Piker.

He calls another guy from the tow company and then that guy shows up as the first guy is leaving. Lu is a big burly Samoan and gets down to business. I say to him, "That's the window we'll break when this doesn't work."

He grins. "Well, look around for a rock!"

The first guy had started to try to roll down the window to get to the lock.  Lu manages to get his bendy tool to get the window starting to roll down, and within a couple of minutes he was able to reach in and unlock the car. 

Lu, you are my hero, man. 

I grab my purse and fish around in it for a terrifying five seconds before I find my keys nestled nicely at the bottom. "SWEET BABY JESUS!" I bellow, ladylike. 

Lu needs me to sign off on the AAA paperwork, and tells me that it would have been around $75 if I didn't have AAA. 

"I would have paid it!" I tell him, not caring at that moment how much money it would have taken to get back into my car. 

So, to recap: it took two knowledgable tow truck/car guys/AAA dudes, eight different tools (between the two guys) and an hour to get into my car. 

If there is any doubt that I plan on ditching this car – but getting a new one without autolocks and such (I don't think that they would have been able to get into a similar car without manual windows), I certainly made up my mind tonight.

Car, we're through.

Tonight I stopped at my mom’s house so we could go to the Clayton Library book sale. We hurried over there since my mom thought it closed at 6, but as we headed into Clayton, we checked the flyer and it closed at 7. I found some books and we went back to her house where I could pick up the 15 pounds of ground beef I’d be frying up for dinner tomorrow (my mom’s birthday dinner at Jason’s).

So I load up the meat and my books into my car and get in. And my car won’t start. Since I drive a stick shift, you have to press in the clutch and the brake at the same time to start the car. Well, the car doesn’t start so I think, oh I better press the clutch in all the way, and I did (not in any way different than usual) AND SOMETHING SNAPPED. And the car doesn’t start.

Meanwhile, since my mom and I were headed over to Jason’s to get money from him for the birthday dinner supplies as I was going to do the shopping tomorrow at Winco, my mom had sped off, leaving me stranded in front of her house. I fiddle around with the car to no avail, then head inside, thinking to call the car place to see if they were open on the weekends (they’re not).

So I call over to Jason’s, but he’s completely confused by my story, and then I call back a few minutes later and my mom had gotten there, so she comes back home and picks me up (and I’ve hauled the meat back inside to their house) and I get the meat out of their fridge and we head over to Jason’s. She had the great idea that I could borrow his van since he doesn’t use it.

So I stuff the meat into his fridge, and we get the list together of the things I need to pick up at Winco (soda, mushroom soup, etc. etc.) and I get Jason’s keys, and the fifteen pounds of meat, and we go out to the driveway and get into the cars, and while I’m turning the key in his van and hearing the unmistakable clicking of a dead battery, my mom speeds off to their house.

Desperately, I turn the key one more time. CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK

“MOTHEREFFER!!!” I screech to high heavens, staring at the fifteen pounds of meat.

I pick up the fifteen pounds of meat and exit the car, clutching it my bosom as my last lifeline to sanity.

I go back inside Jason’s house with the meat. “WHAT.” He’d be more menacing if he didn’t need a haircut so bad.

“Your car won’t start,” I tell him. “The battery’s dead.”

He doesn’t believe me.

“Really!” I say, as the meat starts to slide. I hoist it up and head back to the refrigerator where I stuff it back onto the shelf.

Phone in hand, I sit down on the couch, sans meat. Pitifully.

I call my parents.

My dad picks up the phone. “HELLO! IT IS MELISSA!” I say.

“Hi,” he says.

I relate to him my pitiful story. I’m starting to think I might have to stay over at Jason’s, given how my day has gone. Or, alternately, desperately clutch the meat to myself while I walk the two miles home through a sketchy neighborhood (I considered it.).

A few minutes later my dad has come to get me, and he says he’ll call my uncle Tom, who knows cars, and maybe he can fix it.

Now I’m finally home, about to have popcorn for dinner, made saltier by my tears of bitterness and betrayal.

Strike 2, car, strike 2.