Hey, you know what? If you happen to be outside of a Trader Joe’s one day (like yesterday), and you see four dudes trying to get someone’s keys out of a beat-down Toyota that the keys are obviously locked in, and one of the dudes works at the pizza place and has gone inside the pizza place and gotten one of those wooden pizza handle-things for getting pizza out of the oven and is STICKING IT IN THE CAR DOOR, and another dude is standing on the hood of the car, and other dudes are gathered around watching and encouraging the Main Dude, who has (in McGyver-like style) fashioned two coat hangers together and is pressing himself against the window of said car, trying to defy physics and maneuver the hanger to catch precariously on the lock so he can open it, and everyone is so engrossed in this shenanigan that they don’t even notice when you walk up and are staring at them, maybe you should just walk by and let them finish what they were doing. Maybe the best thing to do isn’t to offer to call AAA for them, because you know what they will say?
They will yell “NO, MAN—HE’S ALMOST GOT IT!”
And then maybe you will sigh, and shake your head, and try to remember the times in your life when you locked your keys in your car (back when this was even possible) or (due to bad planning and estimations) you actually ran out of gas, and you are pretty sure that you would have taken the help if someone had offered it, and so it makes you laugh when you go inside the store and do your shopping, then pass by what has become FIVE DUDES AND A BIG CROWD TRYING TO GET THE KEYS OUT, and don’t say anything because they still have not succeeded in their quest and it would probably be kind of a bitchy thing to do to point out that AAA would have been there by now, and—lo and behold! THE FIVE DUDES FINALLY SUCCEED IN LIBERATING THE KEYS FROM THE CAR, and a cheer goes up like they’re storming the beaches at Normandy, and just then you realize it was never really about the keys anyway.
It was about the dudes, you see. They united together against a common oppressor, and then they were triumphant. That’s sort of beautiful, in a “you guys are complete dipshits and should have taken my offer to help you” kind of way.
Ah well. Sometimes the difference between men and women is funny, or maybe between people in their twenties and people in their thirties. Because, here’s what: it is now impossible for me to lock my keys in my car because of the alarm and automatically-opening doors, but I promise you that if this circumstance were to happen to me, I would be like “Oh, that’s inconvenient,” and then I would call one of the two institutions of roadside assistance that I have in place to help me with things like this, and then I would go run some errands, and eventually one of them would come and solve my problem.
I’m saying, it has been at least 15 years since I have been involved in an automobile-related caper or shenanigan. In fact, last week one of my tires started to go flat, and I got it patched and it was still leaking air, and I took it straight to the dealership and was like “here—make this problem go away. I will need a loaner car.” Of course, this loaner car was a Toyota Yaris and that, my friends, is a whole different story, and my car ended up actually needed FOUR new tires that had to be special-ordered and so it took awhile to actually get it back, but at no time was I standing on the roof of a car or sticking a pizza-oven handle into anything. Which proves, I guess, that I am mature?
Seriously though—you know you are in your thirties when you can size up a situation and be like “oh yeah—that’s going to take up a lot of time,” then decide what to do about it.
In closing: DUDES! KEYS!! CAR!!!!