h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

God knows I’ve done stupid things before (picking up a snake in
A swamp, for example, thinking it would wind around my arm. Instead
it bit me ). Somehow, what I did last night was incomparably stupid and boneheaded:

I got out of work at 9:00 p.m., and drove to the Stop & Shop on the way Home. I got out of the car, went in, got my groceries, and at the checkout Counter I realized that my car keys were not in my pocket . I looked all around the store to see if I had dropped them somewhere. Nope, no keys. I carried my grocery bags out of the store, looking for The missing keys on the ground as I walked. When I got back to the Car, I noticed that the engine seemed to be running .

Is that stupid or what? Leaving the car running but locked. It was lucky I only had 3/4 of a mile to walk to get home and retrieve my extra key. It was unlucky that (a.) I had two bags of groceries to carry, (b.) I Hadn’t brought an umbrella into the store, and (c.) it was raining hard Enough that my eyeglasses misted up within ten minutes.

So there I was, carrying groceries in the dark with fogged-up glasses. Don’t know how I got home without falling in a pothole. Having an umbrella on the return trip made it a lot easier.

A few sore muscles and some wasted gas were the price I paid for this
Craziness. It could have been a lot worse .

Several years ago a friend of mine stopped at his own house to run in and grab something before heading back out for the evening. He got distracted in the house, played a video game, watched a television show and eventually went to bed. In the morning his car was still out front, with the keys in, and still running.

It had been running, parked, for 8 or 10 hours.

Okay, I guess your friend was more forgetful/absentminded than I was. He was lucky to have a car parked in front of his house. I, on the other hand, had three bags of groceries to carry through the dark rainy evening, and no umbrella . I'm still the bigger dummy, not that it brings me any satisfaction.

I did that once - locked the keys in the car, and it running. Outside a restaurant.

Luckily, a family member was home, and came out with the extra set of keys while I had my lunch.

The Car Guys from your neck of the woods have a solution to save gas, however. They say you should stick a potato in the tailpipe, to shut the engine off.

I noticed last winter after several mornings of starting my car early so it would warm up that the driver's side door will not lock if the car is running. I had always used my spare for warm-ups because I'm always scared of locking my keys in, and then found out that all along my car had been sitting in the driveway, running, with the keys in and the driver's door unlocked. (Which fortunately isn't a big risk where I live, but you never know...).

I've since learned that I can start the car with the spare, get out, close the door, then lock it with the other key.

My goodness Paulie! Sounds like something I'd do!

I did the same thing *twice* over the summer months, Paul.

My car's air conditioning has been broken, and rather than have it fixed for mucho $$$$$, I decided to simply roll down the windows and rough it. However, manually rolling up the windows after arrival sometimes caused me to become distracted, leaving the keys in a running ignition. My car was left idling all afternoon in the parking lot at w*rk after I wandered blithely away when I came back from lunch. This embarrassment was discovered as I was leaving to go home that night after a frantic search for my "missing" keys. Fortunately, I keep a spare car key in my purse!

A couple of weeks later, I left the stupid thing running for several hours parked in front of our home before the next-door neighbor kindly let me know it was running. Ack! My mind is going! (In my defense, my car can *barely* be heard when the engine is running while parked.) It was fortunate that he let me know, because it was Poets evening and the car might have gone on running for the entire weekend!

The gas lost was probably minimal in your case, Paul. One time, the owner of the company where I work needed to use a rented van inside a trade show for display. He found out that the convention center rules wouldn't allow any vehicles to be indoors with more than 1/8 of a tank of gasoline for fire safety reasons. Of course, any time a vehicle is rented, it comes with a topped-up tank, so the boss decided to let it run in his garage to burn off the gas before taking it there.... well, he let it run all night... and the needle on the gas guage had had hardly budged, only a tiny bit.

So anyway, you're not the only one who's absent minded, Paul! Good thing I didn't have kids.... they would have been found wandering naked with bloated bellies in the streets. Oh wait.... maybe I *did* have kids but I forgot.

I told my story to the lady at the front desk at the community pool, and she had locked her keys in her car Monday night, so it must be something in the air.

So far, I've been lucky in that I've always been close enough to home that I can walk home, get the spare key, and come back.

AW, I don't know what to say about your missing children that you forgot about. They've probably done despicable things like become lawyers and used-car salesmen.

Perhaps you could duct tape a spare key inside your navel.

If the children time forgot are out there, I'm sure they're doing far more despicable... they're politicians.

... doing *something* far more despicable. I forgot a word.

I'm thinking that the walking-grocery-rain-dark combination will keep you from forgetting your keys again!

After a night out with a friend who locked the keys in the car (I was dressed as Superwoman, she was a green-faced alien, it wasn't Halloween, and it was 3am), I got into the habit of locking my car with the key from the outside, so I wouldn't forget my keys in the ignition. It's such a habit now that I've never locked the keys in! Mind you, I absent-mindedly slip them into a jacket pocket, then forget that I did it ...

So the truth finally comes out. Shea is Superwoman.... and she hangs out with Spock.

Shea, your advice seems pretty good. I'll consider trying it.

But why were you and your friend dressed in costumes if it wasn't Halloween?

"If the children time forgot are out there, I'm sure they're doing far more despicable... they're politicians" [AW]

So, let me get this straight. When politicians go bad, it's all the fault of neglectful mothers?

There is no such thing as a "good" politician, whether they had devoted mothers or not.

I stand corrected.

You dropped your keys, Paul.

I've gotten into the habit of not locking anything unless I have the keys in my hand. I've locked myself out of the house a few too many times - far more often than I've locked my keys in the car.

Dropped my keys? I've also sung off-key a few times