Adventures with the Plano Fire Department

Imagine, if you will, a Target parking lot.  There is our car, nestled between a few others.  I've just finished our shopping and have pushed the buggy through the gusty winds to the driver's side.  I open the sliding door, place Robert safely in his seat, buckled and out of the wind.  Our purchases are resting inside the large rubbermaid bins I bought and need to go to the passenger side as well as the buggy to the buggy corral.  So, I plop my keys and and purse in the driver's seat, close both doors and trot around to the other side.  Jiggle, jiggle...the door won't open.  No problem, I'll just go around to my door and grab the keys, afterall, maybe I just unlocked the driver's door (despite the fact that Robert's door has already been opened).  Jiggle, jiggle...nothing.  

Ok, don't panic.  We pay a monthly subscribers fee to On Star, who can unlock my doors remotely.  But wait, my cell phone is in my purse on my front seat.  No worries, I'll just nab this nice lady with the toddler and borrow her phone.  800-4-OnStar.  But, each time, I'm immediately disconnected. No message or anything.  I have to let her go into the store...her 2 year old is freezing in the wind and apparently her cell phone is broken.  So, I wait. Another car pulls up and I ask them to alert security inside the store that I've locked my keys in my car with my baby, but the 2 ladies reappear and tell me that he'd already been alerted by the first lady and security says "there's nothing we can do."(which isn't true because he could at least give me a lock smith's number)   So, I borrow their phone for On Star.  This time Verizon wireless tells me that the number I have dialed does not exist.  I tried Doug's phone (the only other number I have memorized) and he didn't answer a strangers number because he was in the middle of a meeting.  So, no luck getting the number from him.

Ever so slowly, here comes Mr. Security.  He wanders around my car jiggling a few handles and the ladies ask him if he knows or could get the number for On Star.  He makes some call, but it is fruitless.  He says, "well, if there is no child in the car, we can't do anything."  But there is!!  He's right there!  "Oh, I didn't see him.  I'm sorry, I can help you now."  So, he dials 911 and reports the situation.  

Just about 2 minutes later I see a fire truck cresting the overpass, sirens blaring.  "I hope that's not for me!" I told Mr. Security.  "Nah, it couldn't be."  But at that moment the truck turned into the parking lot.   It's an old engine, not state of the art for fire fighting, but well equipped to unlock the minivan of a scatterbrained mother.

Four firemen pile out of the engine.  They jam a white plastic wedge near the upper corner of my door, push in a large poking device and try to push the power lock button.  It's too slippery, we can't push it, but the lock lever pulls toward the door opening, so the tiny hook at the end of the poking device was able to grab and pull.  The alarm sounded and I disarmed it.  

We opened Robert's door to check on him (though, he had just been singing and shaking his rattle) and the fireman greeted him.  He stuck out his bottom lip and glared at me.  I tried to explain that this gave him bragging rights over his brother and sister for at least a month because he'd seen a fire truck and had serenaded 4 firemen, but he didn't seem so impressed.  

So, now I guess I'm making some cookies for the Plano Fire Department and delivering them.  I don't really know what happened, but I have locked the keys in the car once before.  If the doors are open and you push the door lock button on our remote control, it sets a delayed lock that will lock the doors when they are all closed.  But, it does beep at me to alert me that it is set and I did not hear the beep today.  The irony is that Doug and I decided last week to cancel On Star and put that money toward the down payment for a new house.  I hadn't yet made the call to cancel, but apparently I didn't know they number to call anyway.  As it turns out it is 888-4-OnStar.  Now the decision is more complicated.  Do we continue to pay for a service that would have been very useful to us today and plan to print a label for our window with the phone number on there.  OR do we go ahead and cancel that service in hopes that next time Mary and William will be in the car too and get to see the fire truck...all the while, playing the odds that it won't happen again because I have learned to put my keys in my pocket instead of the front seat.  

But what about when I don't have pockets?