Locked Out… of My Car and My Common Sense

Everyone has locked their keys in their car at some time or another, but my story may surprise you. Why?  

Well, for starters, I locked my keys in the car while the car was still running. 

While the car was sitting in the middle of the road.

In the middle of a busy intersection. 

And…

At the very moment the light turned green.  

You’d think a school teacher would have more common sense than this, but actually, being a school teacher is what got me into this predicament in the first place.

It was a beautiful spring day, late in the month of April, 1999.  The kind of day where everyone is happy. The school day was over, and I was driving through town on my way home. As I pulled to a stop at the intersection of a red light, the square in Elizabethtown, I heard a thump. Something hit my car. I looked toward the corner, across the street to my left, where a group of rowdy teenagers, some of them my students, were laughing and trying not to make eye contact. I realized they had thrown something at my car.

Always a teacher, I popped open my door – the light was still red, determined to know what they had thrown at my car and to teach them a lesson.  Sure enough, right at the ebb of my rear tire was a soda can. There were no cars behind me, and I knew this would only take a second, so I jumped from my car, picked up the can, and dashed to the other side of the street to confront the students.

“Empty soda cans get thrown away, not at people’s cars,” I scolded, handing the can to the guilty looking one with the spiked collar and chained wallet.

“Oh, sorry,” was his only reply. 

Feeling a sense of triumph – he did apologize after all, I dashed back to my car. The light was now green and a line of traffic backed up behind me. Reaching for the door handle, I was jolted by a terrifying feeling of disbelief which flowed from my hand to my brain and then sunk to the pit of my stomach. The door was locked. Trying not to panic, I thought quickly.  Okay, it’s a four door sedan, I reasoned, reaching for the handle on the back door – it didn’t budge. I glanced through the windows to the other side – all the locks were down. Why had I ever gotten into the habit of locking my doors when I stepped outside my car???

The cars were flying by me on the other side of the yellow line, but the increasing row of cars behind me was steeped in tension, beeping their horns and hollering out their windows.  

I turned to the car directly behind me, “Sorry, my keys are locked in the car.”  

After looking at me like I was crazy, honestly I couldn’t argue with him on that point, he proved to be a Good Samaritan anyway and jumped from his car to help me.  

Quickly, I told him the whole story, knowing all the while he was witnessing the “all‑star, stereotypical woman driver.” Still, this was a catastrophe, and he was willing to help.  

“I have a tool back at my shop,” he told me. “A metal bar to slip into the door and unlock it. It’s just a couple of blocks up the road.” 

With that he jumped in his car and, to avoid the oncoming traffic, pulled up on the sidewalk, around my car, and raced off down the road. The line of cars continued to move on the other side of mine and the horns continued to blare behind me. Concerned for my safety, (you should never stand in the middle of a busy intersection), I crossed the street and ducked into the open door of a guitar shop to borrow the phone. You see, I had locked my keys in the car before, and I knew a policeman could be a “girl’s best friend.”  

Phoning the police, and having to “again” tell the story of the dimwitted woman who locked her keys in the car in the middle of a busy intersection, I pleaded for them to send someone right away.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” the officer quipped. “Unfortunately, there’s been an accident further up the road from you and both squad cars are there right now.”  

“I’m worried,” I replied, “if you don’t get here soon, there may be another accident.”  

As I looked out the window I could see the impatient cars slowly pulling into the other lane, narrowly missing both my car on their right, and the oncoming traffic on their left.  

“You may want to try a lock-smith,” he suggested.

My hero had not yet returned, and I was beginning to give up hope.  Quickly I dialed the number in the yellow pages of a local locksmith. His wife informed me that he was on another job up the road and it might be ten minutes till he got there.

I told her I had someone coming to help me and the police were also trying to get there.  

“Well,” she said in a very displeased voice, “if my husband comes to unlock your car, you better pay him – and it’s $45.00.”  

I assured her if he gets me into my car, I will certainly pay him. As I hung up the phone, the Good Samaritan came running breathlessly down the block carrying a slim metal bar. Hope filled my heart; I couldn’t afford to pay anyone $45.00. I needed to get in my car and get out of there fast.  

I rushed across the street to help out. Sticking the bar inside the door, he tried to find the trigger to release the lock. He tried and tried, wiggling it every which way, but no luck.  

Suddenly, I remembered something. About three years ago I had purchased a magnetic key box, the kind that you hide a key in and then place it up inside the hub of the tire. Could it still be there? Just as this epiphany hit me, I see a truck coming up the road with the words, “Locksmith,” painted on its side.  

“I remember I hid a key in the hub of the tire,” I exclaimed. “Here comes the Locksmith! Quick, I’ve got to find it.”  

Reaching up into the hub of the rear tire, behind my door, I found nothing but thick soot. Frantically, I ran to the other side and ran my hand up and under the arc of the rim. 

“Clink!” The metal box fell onto the street – the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard. 

The locksmith had parked his truck on the opposite side of the intersection and was making his way across the busy road toward my car.  

“Hurry! Hurry!” the Good Samaritan with the metal bar was yelling at me.

Taking the key from the tiny box, I quickly unlocked the passenger side door and slid across to sit behind the wheel.  By now this big, brawny, bald-headed locksmith in his yellow uniform was at my window yelling, yes yelling at me.  

“I left my job to come here. You owe me $45.00.”

I would have pulled away from this awful scene, oh how I wanted to, but the light was red. 

Now he was pounding on my front window and threatening me. “I’m calling the cops!” he ranted. “I’m going to sue you for theft of services.”  

Meanwhile my partner in crime, the Good Samaritan, is jumping up and down in the middle of the road yelling at me as well, “Go! Go! Just Go!”

As if this hadn’t already been a bad day, I looked both ways into the miraculously empty intersection, floored the gas pedal, running straight through the red light, and fled toward the safety home, away from that terrible man.  

Glancing into my rear view mirror, I see the Locksmith angrily looking toward my car while my Good Samaritan is jumping up and down in front of him, flailing his arms in an attempt to block his view, I presumed, from my license plate. He definitely deserves a place in heaven, or at least a beer. 

When I got home, my whole body was shaking in fear. Did he get my plate number? Could he sue me for theft of services? Hoping to cover my bases, and my ass, and with a quivering hand, I did the only thing I could do. I dialed the local police station. 

“Hello,” a friendly voice answered. “Elizabethtown Police Station.” 

I recognized the voice as the same officer I had spoken to earlier.  

“Hi,” I said timidly. “This is Lyn Shaffer. I called you earlier about my car?”

“Hello Mrs. Shaffer,” he replied, stretching out the words, knowingly. “I understand you got into your locked car without our help after all.”

“Yes,” I meekly replied, wondering what else they knew.

“A Mr. Swope just phoned us and told us the whole story.”

“The story?” I ask, not wanting to give anything away.

“Yes,” he replied. “About wanting to sue you for theft of services.  Seems he expects payment?”

“I know,” I said, panic rising in my voice. “But he didn’t get me into my car. Honest. I was already in when he arrived.”

“Yes, Mrs. Shaffer. I understand," the officer quipped. “We informed him that he has no case against you.

Whew. I thought, breathing a sigh of relief.

“But Mrs. Shaffer?” 

There he goes, stretching out his words again. Here it comes, I just know they’re  going to ask me to come into the station. I’m going to get a ticket for a lot more than $45.00  - or perhaps it will be worse. I’ll be charged with obstructing traffic, endangering the lives of others, fleeing the scene of a crime. I’m in so much trouble!

“Yes?” I say in a whispered voice that somehow isn’t mine.

“Mrs. Shaffer,” he repeated my name. 

Here it comes.

“Don’t ever get out of your car in the middle of an intersection,” he said, then paused for emphasis. “And don’t drive through red lights – no matter what!”

Somehow, through my tears of relief, I managed to say I’m sorry and promise to never do it again. And you know what? I never have. Not yet anyway.