"I'm at a pay phone trying to call home, all of my change I spent on you!...."

Sometimes, even our best intentions, aren't part of the 'real' plan.  For instance, let's look at my morning so far...

I had somewhere to be today at 9:30.  I had to be prepared with supplies.  At 9:00 I was all ready to go, but was a little early.  So I decided to run by Target on my way there.  I left Target at 9:23, with plenty of time to get where I was going.  (The next 20 -25 minutes seemed like an hour or so.  I guess that is why I can have so much to say about such a short period of time.)

Next to my car was parked another car, on the drivers side, where a mom was getting her kids out of her car and putting them in a cart that was sitting right by my door.  Leaving the drivers side of my car, momemtarily, unaccessible.  It was freezing cold outside.  With the wind chill (and it was windy) the temp had to be in the teens, maybe low 20's.  So I was anxious to get Tate in the car and let car start to warm up. 

I went to the passenger side of the car and unlocked the door.  (Manually, no 'working' power locks on this baby.)  I reached to the back passenger side door and unlocked it.  I put Tate in the back seat and told him to crawl across the seat and get in his car seat.  I then reached across the front passenger seat and started the car so it could warm up.  I also unlocked the driver side door.  I closed both passenger side doors and walked around the car.  The other mom and her children were now gone.  I still needed to unlock Tate's door, so I reached for the drivers door and before I pull the latch, ALL the locks in the car locked by themself.  Ummmm....  WHAT?!!!!!! 

So, Tate is now locked in the car.  The running car.  My purse with my phone in it is also locked in the car.  Before completely freaking out, I told Tate to unlock the door by pulling the lock up.  He tried, but wasn't able to get a stong enough grip on it, and his little hands slipped off the lock every time.  Within a minute or two a woman was walking by and I had to ask her if I could borrow her phone.  After being briefed on my situation, of course she let me.  I called Brian, but of course we don't have a spare key.  There was nothing he could do. 

By this time Tate had crawled up to the front seat and was having a blast turning the steering wheel and playing with the window wipers.  My pleas to Tate began to grow louder, and probably more desperate sounding.  Tate had found the radio button and had turned on some Maroon 5 as loud as he possibly could.  With all this noise it was no surprise that more and more people started to ask what was going on.  One man was kind enough to call the police for me. 

My new friend (the random woman with the phone) finally decided there was nothing she could do anyway, and she was FREEZING, so she went about her shopping and was going to check on me on her way back to her car.  I kept talking to Tate to try and get him to open the locks or roll down the window.  He had no intererst.  He was enjoying every minute of this freedom with full access to all the controls in the car.  The smile on his face was huge, and I'm convinced he could have played there for hours.  As long as he didn't put the car in gear before that...  Forunately, he had set the emergency brake. 

The police finally arrived.  They set to work prying a wedge between the door and frame to see if they could manuver a long wire down to push the door unlock button.  (The same buttons that don't work.)  Obviously that didn't work.  Another woman offered me a cookie to see if it would tempt Tate to try and open the doors again.  He did act interested for a few seconds, until he realized that he couldn't lift the lock so he went back to playing. 

The police couldn't get anything to work on the passenger side door, so they came over to the drivers side and tried there.  Luckily, Tate decided to move over to the passenger side seat and try and open the glove box.  This was a relief because we thought for sure he would start grabbing the wire and mess up all of the police man's efforts. 

Finally, the cop got the window rolled down and we were able to unlock the door.  I was relieved.  It only took 20 or 25 minutes.  Seemed like more.  I got Tate buckled in, signed a form for the police (luckily no ticket or anything), and began on my way again.  Brian showed up just as I was leaving. 

Lessons learned: don't start the car until I am sitting in the drivers seat.  Teach children to unlock the car!  Have a spare key, or two.  Get one of those magentic boxes to hide spare key somewhere on the outside of the car.  Be grateful for people who are willing to put their schedules aside and help out for a minute. 

Things could have been worse.  Looking back on it, it was more funny that stressful.  I'm lucky Tate and I were watched over and that a few special people were sent to help me. 

I never made it to where I was supposed to be going today.  But, apparently, I just wasn't meant to be there.  Instead I have a good story to laugh about.  :)


(I didn't proof read this, it was too long.  Ha.  Congrats to you if you made it through the whole post!)