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| My mom and her Ford Explorer key fob are a dangerous combination! |
If you have been
reading this blog even semi-regularly, you have probably gathered that my mom
and I are very close. What can I say? I just really like the woman. As you know, when you are really close to someone,
you get to see the good, the bad, the ugly, and the quirky (dare I say batty?)
things about them. Now, my mom is quite a normal woman, really, but she does
have certain idiosyncrasies that become apparent when you know her well. There are
two particular quirks I will touch on in this post.
Now, before you go
thinking that I'm about to air my mom's dirty laundry for all the world to see,
let me just tell you two things: first, I don't think that many people actually
read this blog anyway, and second, I have asked my mom's permission to write about
this topic, and have given her full veto power over the end product. So if she
doesn't like it, you won't see it, and this entire paragraph will be a moot
point.
My mom can be rather
obsessive at times. Not Fatal Attraction,boil your bunny obsessive, but obsessive over little things that might seem
like mere details to someone else. Her first obsession is centered on her
built-in car alarm. My mom has had this obsession since she got her current
car, a Ford Explorer, in 2002. Before that she never drove cars with alarms,
because she always drove station wagons prior to the Explorer, and, in the very
early eighties, she even drove a Ford Pinto. Ford Pintos and station wagons do
not even need car alarms, because
neither is what would be considered the height of automotive sophistication and
luxury, and who would try to steal one anyway?
Well, ever since my
mom got a car with an alarm and a little electronic key fob, car security has
been at the forefront of her mind. This would be just fine if she simply got
out of the car, turned on the alarm, and proceeded to her shopping, or dining,
or whatever she had gone out to do. However, if there is one thing I have
learned from being alive for 35 years, it's that life is rarely simple, so, as you
can imagine, my mom’s car security obsession manifests itself in some
inconvenient ways. The typical scenario goes as follows:
Mom and I drive to
Wal-Mart and park approximately 25 and ½ miles from the front entrance. We trek
up to the entrance, and traipse through the store and then realize that one of us has to go to the bathroom, so we
trek all the way to the back of the store. Then, before we can even locate the
restroom, without fail, my mom asks, "Did I beep the alarm thingy?"
Now, to be honest with you, I can rarely ever recall if she turned on the alarm
or not. When I am about to go into a Wal-Mart, which is, to me, the tenth
circle of hell, I am usually so mentally engaged in planning a quick escape
route that I wouldn't even notice if you ran over me with a Mac truck. But,
being fatally honest, I always answer, "I don't know," which means we
have to slog all the way back to the car. We trudge back through the store,
dodging errant children along the way, and then we slog the eleventy billion
miles back to the car, and, did I mention that it's raining by this point and
neither one of us has an umbrella?
We reach the car, at
which point my mom double clicks the security button on the key fob, and the
horn beeps, letting us know the alarm is set. The frustrating thing is that we
never actually know if she had set the alarm to begin with or not. This means
that there is no telling her, “See, you did set the alarm!” and possibly getting
her to see that she never forgets to set it, thereby ending the behavior. So, unfortunately,
before we have even gotten to the shopping part of the trip, we have already
covered the distance travelled by the average ultramarathon runner in a year's
time. Then we get to wade back to the front entrance, looking like two
contestants in the world's most unfortunate wet t-shirt contest. We do our
shopping, probably getting a 10-gallon container of Tide laundry detergent for
$.42. Our clothes dripping, we hike back to the front of the store, pay for our
purchase, and swim back to the car.
The whole car
security obsession has been maddeningly irritating for me, until I realized the
secret to making it go away: I simply said yes. Anytime my mom asked me if she
had "beeped the alarm thingy," I told her that yes, she had.
Regardless of whether I had noticed or not, or even if my mom had left the car’s
two front windows rolled all the way down, if she asked, I answered in the
affirmative.
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| This distance runner and I complete the same average mileage per week. |
The results were
amazing! Two whole days of not having to complete the weekly mileage of a
distance runner during a simple trip to the store. But, alas! I am a terrible
liar, and Mom quickly realized that something was rotten in the state of
Georgia. When I fessed up to my crimes, she was none too pleased, either. This
whole car alarm obsession goes along nicely with my mom’s other automobile-based quirk: parking in the parking space that is furthest away from our
destination even when there is a spot right in front of the building we wish to
go to.
For example, my
mom and I will be going to Target (mom always drives because her car is much
nicer than mine), and when we arrive in the Target parking lot she will turn
down a row right in front of the store. Suddenly, by some miracle of God, I
will spy the best parking space that has ever existed in the history of humankind.
“Look!” I will
exclaim, “A spot! Park there!”
“Where?” Mom will
ask.
“There!” I will
reply, pointing emphatically.
“Oh, that’s a good
spot!” she will say, driving right by said spot.
She will then careen
the car to the end of the row and park in a spot where she is able to back the
car in. Did I mention that the spot is the approximate distance from the store
that the moon is from the earth? I don’t know why she does this, other than
possibly to punish me for all the things I did during my teen years and early
twenties that caused her great amounts of worry. You can probably guess where
this story is going now. We walk all the way up to the front entrance of
Target, trek to the back of the store to buy bleach wipes or something, and Mom
asks that fateful question: “Did I beep the alarm thingy?” We then complete the
Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in an effort to return to the car, only
without raising money for a good cause, and without the nice refreshment
stations.
You will probably
never end up in a car with my mom, (unless you carjack her. Wait, you’re not
planning to carjack her are you?) but if you do, I can guarantee you she is
going to ask you if she set her car alarm. And when she does, trust me on this,
the only appropriate answer is “Yes, yes, 1,000 times yes!”
Key fob photo courtesy of http://www.ebay.com
Distance runner photo courtesy of http://running.competitor.com/
