I’m not too keen on this rental car! For one thing… it’s not mine. For another… it came with a fancy schmancy key fob thingy!
I’m a creature of habit and suddenly I don’t need keys to start my car but need to carry a key fob “on my person”. Who the hell is “my person” and what’s a “fob”?
As long as the key fob is with me I can unlock, start and turn off the car with the push of a button… never putting a key in a hole. Hmmm… not bad… except now I have to remember to bring my purse, jacket, shoe or whatever else I left the key fob attached to when I head to the car!
If I treat the fob as if it were a set of keys… there’s no hole to put it in when I get in the car! I can almost guarantee if I put the thing in the cup holder… I’ll forget to take it with me when I get out! I’m worried I’ll forget it in the car and lock the doors behind me… THEN WHAT? Besides that, whenever I get out of the car and lock it, I’m used to testing the door to see if they’re “really” locked. Unfortunately with this fancy schmancy keyless entry thingy, every time I try the door to make sure the car is locked… the car unlocks! It’s a vicious circle of locking and unlocking and f I didn’t have OCD before… I definitely have it now!
While at Digby Pines this week my youngest headed to the trunk to get something and on arriving back at the cottage I heard the dreaded “I LOCKED THE KEYS IN THE TRUNK!!” Of course she did.
I was fit to be tied.
I’ve only one set of keys which aren’t really keys at all…. AND… it was a Provincial Holiday so the rental company was closed. In desperation, I headed out to the car to try the locks and hope the door would open with the fob inside the trunk but no… that would be easy. The doors were locked shut and no amount of my pushing that sensor would open them. I could see the trunk release button… but I couldn’t get near it!
I phoned the rental company to no avail… then phoned their 1-800 “answer quick before I lose it” number and spoke to the Southern accented woman who I assumed was not from the South Shore of Nova Scotia as the two Southern accents sound completely different. After much discussion I was told there was nothing they could do but send out a service person followed up with a “I’m sorry yer girl locked yer keys in the trunk ma’am… I sure hope yer day gits bitter.”
I sent my children to the pool and poured myself a beer.
Around that time I remembered Little-One, Buff, the two Buff-Juniors and their rental car last summer. How they locked the keys in the trunk… how Enterprise sent a fellow to help… how he Slim-jimmed the door open… how they pushed the trunk release… how it tripped the car alarm… and how horns blared at length until the “master set” was brought in the next day as described in detail in last year’s post “Don’t mean to alarm you but…”
All I needed was alarms going nuts at the fancy schmancy Digby Pines while I stood there like a dummy!!!
I cracked another beer.
During the forty minute wait for the guy from the garage, I googled “I locked my key fob in the trunk of my Nissan Altima” and received a ton of hits from people who did the same. One response in particular had me running to the trunk to find the “trunk’s sensor button” while crossing my fingers that the key fob was close enough that the sensor would detect it and low and behold IT DID! The trunk popped open and there was the fob… right where my kid had left it!
Why didn’t the rental company tell me that?
I’m not too keen on this rental car. Or the key fob. Or the thought of alarms going off at the resort I was staying at. Or change.
Mostly I’m not too keen on change. Or the sixty bucks they charged for sending someone from the garage when I figured it out myself!
I’ll find out in a day or two what the deal is with my car. If I need to get a new one… it’ll definitely have a set of keys!